


We Dare Not Die

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: (Musician! Marco?), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Marco Bott/Jean Kirstein-centric, Musician! Jean, Pining Jean, YouTuber! Jean, Youtube! Marco, Youtuber AU, a lil bit of Ereri mixed in there cos why not, angsty teen smoking, did I mention slow build/slow burn, jeanmarco, no beta read eek, springles - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-09-25 20:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 60,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9841943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Jean is just another senior in high school about to head into a college career for something he doesn’t want to be, just another kid who doesn’t really know what he wants to do other than follow his stupid dreams. Marco Bodt is a youtuber, in college, and Jean’s guilty pleasure is watching him and his videos. After a lot of internal arguing, some help from good friends, and far too much over - dramatic angst for one human being, Jean says fuck it, grabs his guitar, and hits record on his camera.





	1. Ever Dollar Counts, Every Morning Hurts

**Author's Note:**

> So, here we go again! The last time I attempted a multi - chapter fic was with When Time Didn't Stop, and that was massive and stressful and I hated myself. This time, I think I'm going to try updating maybe once every month ish? I just have more and more things going on in my life, and can't update with around 20,000 words every week, lo siento. 
> 
> The title of this chapter comes from the Vampire Weekend song called 'Run,' which I advise everyone to listen to because it is absolutely amazing. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone reading! I edited it myself (and I never claimed to be good at editing) so sorry if it kind of sucks. If you want to be my beta for this then message me or something, because I am in dire need of assistance in this journey. Other than that, enjoy the show!

“My - name - isn’t - horseface. You’re - wasting - my - time - Jaeger. This - really - sucks - ass,” I say to Eren, counting the syllables off on my fingers to prove that I have the whole five, seven, five thing down. “There’s your goddamn haiku, now get out of my car.” Eren is currently looking up at the car ceiling with a kind of dumb look on his face, counting the syllables to himself on his fingers while also mouthing the words silently.

He finishes and looks over at me. “Huh, you actually _can_ count, Jean. I’m kind of surprised,” he ends his sentence with that annoying little smirk and I decide this is it, time to just go for it and swing at him with a fist. I don’t even care that much that Mikasa is waiting outside the car we’re sitting in and could probably end me easier than I would like to admit. Before my fist makes contact he’s already bolting out the open door (he’s probably let in about a million bugs into my fucking car, the shithead) with a gleeful sound. “Okay bye horseface!” he almost sings. And - because why would he choose to not be a little shit - he leaves the door of the car open.

Damn it.

“Are you done messing with Jean, Eren?” I hear Mikasa ask him, getting up from where she was leaning against the side of the car.

“What? I’m not messing with him.” the annoying green eyed teen protests.

"Also, by the way, 'isn't' is two syllables," she tells him and I feel dumb.

Mikasa mutters a quick thank you to me and closes the car door after Eren, sighing. She has to do this often. Eren gets really excited or curious or just plain idiotic over stupid things, and the stubborn son of a bitch most of the times finds a way to force the rest of us to go along with it. A few days ago it was having to explain to him what the atmosphere was (which killed me on the inside, he’s a senior in high school _he should know what the fucking atmosphere is)_ and today it was haikus.

Eren made one while I was driving them to school about GTA. Then he asked Mikasa to do one and she made up one on the spot about the passing views in the car. It was kind of weirdly scary. But when Eren asked me to make one, I refused point blank. I was driving, for one, and I wasn’t gonna play along with his stupid little morning games that time around.

Well. I saw how that panned out.

I sigh to echo Mikasa, muttering under my breath about stupid little bastards with way too much energy in the morning. On any other condition, I would definitely not be driving Eren and Mikasa to school while on my way to school. Well, maybe Mikasa to be honest, for reasons that are pretty obvious, but Eren would walk. But with the whole situation of their dad leaving midway through junior year, and Mrs. Jaeger working two jobs just to try and make ends meet, I volunteered to drive them to school. It would be way more convenient if they lived in the school district of the public school they go to, but they don’t so they can’t ride the bus there.

The only reason they’re still allowed to go to school there is because Mikasa is in the extremely gifted program. She chose not to skip a grade, but because she’s so fucking smart she gets a lot of exceptions made for her, and therefore made for Eren too. That and her being stupidly beautiful lets her have way too much of a hold over me, I think as I watch her walk away with Eren.

I’d walk up to the place where our friend group flocks in the morning with them, but I have a headache that feels like satan or some shit hammering on my brain. For some reason I feel like my teachers walking the hallways would not feel so hot about popping pills at school. It’s just fucking aspirin, but I know more than seven that would probably pop a vein.

Dry swallowing pills and my feet hurt.

Mornings suck.

When I do manage to find my way to the place we meet up in the mornings, Connie and Sasha are trying to do a makeshift game of chicken against Eren and Ymir, except we aren’t in a pool and our Math teacher, Mr. Smith, is eyeing them from across the high school commons with a glint of danger in his gaze. I quicken up my pace to break them up, because I really don’t need to be handling this right now. Connie and Sasha and I have plans after school, and I don’t want them cancelled because they get in another detention.

“Guys, c’mon, you’re gonna get Mr. Smith to come over and give you detentions if you keep it up,” I tell them, and Ymir rolls her eyes.

“Is that anything new, though?” She asks, balancing Eren on her shoulders with a cocky grin.

“Yeah, stop being a killjoy Jean,” Eren calls. I huff out my nose.

“Jeanbo, calm down!” Sasha coos in a way that’s only a bit mocking. “We’re just having fun!”

“But if you get detention then I have to wait for you before going to Amsterdam,” I complain, crossing my arms over my chest.

“Ah, he’s right, Sash,” Connie concedes, disappointment crossing over his face. “And I just bought a new pack yesterday.” Her face falls.

“Fiiiine,” she sighs dramatically. Eren grumbles, but slides off of Ymir’s shoulders at the same times Sasha slides off of Connie’s. I notice Mr. Smith backing away, and sigh a little bit in relief. God, being their friend is like being a nanny sometimes, I swear.

“You guys are fucking crazy,” I deadpan. Connie shakes his head.

“You know what’s actually crazy? How much Hange was talking about our futures yesterday in science. Like, I don’t know what I’m doing after high school. Why does everyone make a big deal about it?” Connie sighs. Hange is our science teacher, who no one really know if they are a boy or girl or what. In the beginning of the year they just introduced themselves as Hange.

“Actually, same,” Eren replied. “Maybe I’ll go into the military? I’m thinking if I do I’ll be a marine, but I’m just seventeen. How am I supposed to know what I want to spend the entire rest of my life doing?” I nod. I know what my parents want me to do, which is be a lawyer or a doctor or some shit. What I’ll probably do is end up being a teacher, just to spite them but still not completely disappoint them. A more or less respectable job that I know pays little money and lets me get out my rebellion in my blood.

If I had my way, I would probably do something with music. I’ve been playing bass since I was in grade school and my mom could push me into doing the little orchestra program, starting out with cello and then moving on to an upright bass, and then an electric. Of course, she frowned at the electric, and my dad told me I could keep it as long as I understood that I could never join a band or something like that under his roof. As if it was his choice if I kept it or not. It was a 400 dollar bass, if he had a problem with it back then I wouldn’t have fucking cared.

That electric bass had lit me up inside like nothing else, and sure I would keep learning little jazzy bits on the upright, but the plug of the amp and the sound of tension being unleashed into my bloodstream has always been what really drives me. I also play guitar, because rhythm guitar is really fucking easy and I’m mediocre at lead. Ukulele too, because I’m basic.

Perhaps the most alive I feel is with an instrument in my hands and my fingers bleeding because I’ve been playing for hours, my voice cracking and fraying in my throat because I’ve been singing for so long, my notebooks full of chord diagrams and guitar and bass tabs of things I’ve created myself. With my face open and tilted up at the ceiling, eyes screwed shut and singing perhaps out of every crevice of my body, not just my mouth. My lungs of paper become lungs of paint and my eyes become… something else that sounds poetic.

I have me limits down, especially in the morning, okay?

Whatever I might want regarding music however, it for sure won’t happen. For one I’m not even that good, I mean my voice isn’t pretty and my songs more bitter than the taste of too strong coffee on my tongue. Then there’s the whole issue that revolved around the ever present planet of shittiness called ‘My Parents’ which is a rabbit hole I don’t like going down all that often. They have the whole attitude where if they find out that someone is a musician they smile and act like that’s splendid, but then when the person is gone they talk about how music isn’t _really_ a good career choice. Not unless you’re a music teacher or plan on playing at weddings.

So the whole idea of music, especially me going into a career involving music, has remained very strictly off the table between my parents and I. They don’t need to know how much I would rather play at shady bars and make just enough money to sleep in motels than go to a university to learn about some philosophy or law I don’t actually care about at all. They don’t need to know that I wish they would maybe consider music to be a good career choice.

It’s not like they would care if they knew, anyway.

“I feel that,” I reply to Eren. “I mean, I can see a whole fuck ton of futures for me, but none of them do I actually, y’know, _like._ I don’t _want_ to be an attorney or whatever, I don’t _want_ any of this shit.” I sigh, running myhand through my hair. “The parentals are being a bitch about it though.”

“Angsty teen Jean is an angsty teen,” Sasha comments under her breath, and I shoot her a glare. She just beams back at me. “It’s true! You all ‘agh my parents suck I just want to be true to my _self bro_ ’ like an emo kid in 2006. Your teenage angst is like a bad case of BO, I can smell it from miles away.” Connie grins at her.

“Can ‘Teenage Angst BO’ be our new band name?” He asks. Sasha agrees, her voice rising higher with the giddiness of stupid jokes. My friends do this a lot, create fake bands when they ear stupid phrases they like. Things like ‘Kleenex In my brain,’ ‘Shaving Cream buddies,’ and ‘Umbrella Switchboard.’ Once it was even ‘Jean’s Angels,’ but I quickly shut that idea down. It’s not like they actually do anything with the bad, but it’s a real laugh for them.

I frown more, but Eren joins in, laughter edging on his voice. “Can I join your band? I can play the… the floor drums.” Mikasa raises an eyebrow.

“The floor drums?” she questions.

“Yeah. It’s like the regular drums, but instead you just hit the floor with your hands,” he nods like it’s something very legitimate. Sasha laughs.

“Oh my god, that’s perfect,” Connie replies. “I’ll play the air guitar, and Sash, you can do vocals,” She nods, still cackling.

“And Jeanbo can play the bass! He’s the only one of us who actually plays, so we’re just gonna have to lean on him,” she says. Eren turns to me, surprise in his eyes.

“You play the bass, Jean?” He asks, as if this is a very new thing. I narrow my eyes at him.

“Yeah, I-”

“He’s been playing, like, his whole life, how have you only noticed now?” Ymir asks, looking at Eren like he’s weird. Eren just throws up his hands in a sort of ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ gesture.

“I guess he never told me! God, it’s not a crime. But,” he turns back to me again, “that’s actually kind of cool, horseface. Are you any good?” I shrug, about to open my mouth again, but Connie starts talking again.

Y’know, I love my friends. Honestly. They are there for me, they aren’t outright dicks (most of the time anyway), and I’ve known most of them for a great majority of the time that I have spent alive. Therefore, I can be completely justified when I say that sometimes I fucking hate them, because I know how to talk and I don’t need Connie fucking Springer talking for me. (I’m not bitter, what are you talking about.)

“Oh, don’t ask him that,” Connie goes off. “Jean will just be all ‘I mean I guess I’m like mediocre and like I just mess around it’s nothing special really,’ cause he wants us to think he’s all modest and shit, but he’s actually pretty good. Like he can do lead guitar, rhythm, bass, and if you get him drunk enough he sings too!” Eren fucking lights up at that. I’m going to kill Connie Springer.

“Jean… sings?” he questions, looking at me through the narrowed side of his eyes, a slight smirk decorating his lips and a glint that I really, really don’t like in his eyes. Shit. Sasha nods at Eren, the pure evil expression on Eren’s face reflected on hers. I silently plead through telepathy that she’ll please stop, because that’s enough Jean bullying for today, right?

Wrong.

“Hell yeah! I think I might have a video on my phone, actually, of that one party we went to where he got _hammered,_ and he-” I grab her phone out of her hands when she’s pulling it out, unlocking it with my fingerprint and running away. She screeches at me, and starts running after me. “Catch him!” she calls out to Eren and Connie and Ymir. I open her photos app, and go back to the date of that party. Sure enough, she actually _does_ have a video of me. I select it and delete it right before Ymir grabs the phone out of my hands.

Ymir tosses the phone back to Sasha, who catches it with a gleam in her eyes that dies within a second. “Jeeeeeaaaan!” She whines, as I smirk triumphantly. “You ruin everything,” she overdramatically pouts. Connie rubs her back with a just barely mocking sort of nod in agreement, shaking his head at me like the classic disappointed dad in a cliche movie. I just shrug in a reply.

“If you don’t want me to get into your phone, then maybe you shouldn’t let me keep my fingerprint in there,” I tell her, knowing that she isn’t going to take it out. Ever since we could, us three (Connie, Sasha, and I) have had our fingerprints in each other’s phones. Sure, I joke all the time that I don’t trust them, but they _are_ my best friends, and I don’t really have much to hide. Besides, me joking about not trusting them is exactly that, a joke. (Though I really do not trust Connie when it comes to not having a bad music taste, because I’ve grown up with his bad music taste always trying to contaminate me.)

“But I _trusted_ you!” she exclaims, still being dramatic. I roll my eyes, about to reply when the bell signifying the start of the school day rings. Connie grabs my arm, alarm flashing over his face.

“Shit, Jean, we’ll be late for English!” he exclaims, and I start running with him. “See you next hour, Sash!” Connie yells behind him, running with me to get to class in time. We have our first hour on the complete other side of our high school campus than the place we meet up with our friends in the morning, so usually we leave a minute early to make it to class before the second bell, the tardy bell, rings.

As we run some kids are giving us dirty looks for running, and I feel the urge to flip them off. They obviously haven’t had my English teacher, a real fucking hag, and don’t understand that if I get another tardy then I have a detention after school. “Con, you might need to start working out!” I tease him as we dart across the campus, crossing over the outside section of the campus.

“Speak for yourself, Jeanbo!” He jeers back, flipping me the bird with a gleeful smile stretched across his face, his backpack rising up and then hitting his back with every leap he takes while he runs. I let myself grin back, knowing my eyes are alight. I find it annoying to run to class, yeah, but Connie has a weird way of making stupid annoying shit fun. Sometimes. And not that I’d ever tell him that. He has a big enough ego as is. He doesn’t need me adding helium to the balloon.

We arrive at the door of my English class about fifteen seconds before the bell rings, managing to sit down in our chairs before the bell rings. I flop my backpack down on the ground next to my chair, and look over to Connie. He shares a look of victory before our attention is dragged from each other to the front of the classroom, where our English teacher isn’t at. Our English teacher is just at her desk, looking at her phone.

Instead, I see our grade counselor, Ms. Ral, standing up at the front of the English classroom. She has a sunshine smile gracing the beautiful features of her face, which I feel like is the only reason I’ll be able to withstand this class period. She’s a new, young staff member, hired just last year. Almost certainly, if the counselor is leading the class period instead of the teacher, it’s going to be a whole class period devoted to talking about college. As I already expressed, that’s really not my definition of a good time.

“Hello!” She greets us, when everyone is all situated. Some people came in even later than Connie and I, one person even came into the classroom after the bell had ended. However, with Ms. Ral in the front of the classroom and just smiling at all of us, the girl was able to just go sit down and get away with it, only receiving a halfhearted glare from the English teacher. “Today we’re going to be spending this class period talking about what you are all going to be doing after college. We’re already an entire quarter into the school year, and at third quarter we are going to do private sessions with each student as well. For now, though, this is how we are going to talk about our futures.”

It’s pretty obvious from the way some people sigh along with me that I’m not the only one who’s very done with the whole issue of what happens next, what happens when high school is over and done with and you are expected to do something worthwhile with your life. Some girl next to me with her blonde hair hanging loose even rolls her eyes blatantly, cracking her neck with a yawn.

I should probably know her name by now judging by the fact that it’s a quarter of the way through the school year. Oops. I think it begins with an… H…?

“Now, let’s start with just getting a feel for things here. How many people in this classroom know what they are going to do at the end of this school year?” She asks. About 3/4ths of the people in the room raise their hands grumpily, including the teacher. I resist the urge to snort at that just barely. It might be noteworthy, though, that both Connie and I are not any of the kids that raise their hands. We have a sort of mirrored sheepish expression.

“Oh, that’s a good amount,” Ms. Ral comments. “How about some of you share what you want to do after high school? Um, you?” she points to the girl next to me who rolled her eyes, the one who I think her name starts with an H. “What’s your name? And what do you know you want to do after high school is over?” The girl still seems just as bored as before, and she very obviously smacks some gum in her mouth before answering.

“My name’s Hitch. I want to be a politician.” Her answer is fast and pretty blunt as well, and when Ms. Ral pauses as if she’s waiting for Hitch to say more, the blonde girl who I now know her name (and I was right about it starting with an H) just raises an eyebrow. God, not making it very easy on the new staff, are you? Not that I’m much better. At least she knows what she’s doing with her life, more or less. After waiting only a few seconds more, Ms. Ral recognizes the loss and just moves on with what she was doing. I have to say, I can at least respect her attempt.

“Well? Does anyone else want to share?” She asks, and a few kids raise their hands. Some people look very much like they would _not_ like to be called on, and I wonder if they’re doing the whole ‘take one for the team’ thing. More honourable than me, if I’m being honest. I’m doing a sort of turtle impression, hiding my head under my hat and hiking my jacket up more so that I’m kind of a shady looking person to call on. Though I know she’s only calling on people who seem to have sort of a clue right now, I’m sure at some point she’d going to involve the people who don’t know or just don’t give a single shit.

There are the stereotypical answers of course, the ones that don’t surprise anyone. There’s at least five kids who want to be attorneys, and some doctors in the making. There’s a soldier, and a model, and the ever expected actress. When some girl says that even though she knows that it’s unlikely for her to be lucky enough to succeed, but she still wants to be a musician, Ms. Ral positively fucking _beams._

“Something that I have learned that you should know,” Ms. Ral starts, flipping her hair a little bit while looking at all of us like we’re so, so young. She can’t be more than a few years older than me, right? “Is that you really never know what is going to happen. You could be the next great pop idol while trying to be a country singer, you could be discovered in the movie industry at a car wash. What I’m really trying to tell you is that you should at least let yourself try if you want it that much, because if you don’t then you’re definitely never going to make it, yeah?”

We all nod, and her words echo around inside of my head for the rest of first hour. _‘at least let yourself try if you want it that much, because if you don’t then you’re definitely never going to make it, yeah?’_ When the bell signifying the start of passing period and the end of first hour rings, Connie has to shake my shoulder because I’ve zoned out thinking about it. “You alright, man?” he asks, only a brief flit of concern showing on his face.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m all good,” I reply, getting up and grabbing my shit, ready to go to second hour orchestra class. While orchestra isn’t necessarily the most fun of classes all the times (we have four concerts a year and damn is it stressful, at least the finals are pretty easy and I get to play bass. Our actual final last year was just listening to music and writing something that it made us think, and my friend wrote Steve x Bucky fanfiction (She got a 100% on the final).

The teachers are two really eccentric people, one man with a blonde beard and mustache and a wife with two kids and the other with a steady boyfriend who never comes by but we all know exists because of how much Nanaba will talk about him, calling him a dumbass that they love anyway. The wife and kids teacher, who we just call Mike, is kind of weird with smells and stuff, but he’s actually pretty cool. The other orchestra teacher, (also blonde) who just introduced themselves as Nanaba, is like Hange. No one really knows if Nanaba is biologically a boy or a girl, so everyone just uses them pronouns (which is what I’m pretty sure Nanaba prefers anyway).

We just recently had our concert for around Halloween time, so today will probably be the day when we turn in all our old music and maybe get one of our new songs we’re going to learn. When I walk into the room, however, I see Nanaba perching on Mike’s shoulders, trying to pull the very tiny string to turn the fan on in our classroom. Their makeshift tower wobbles and I swear I see both of their lives flash before my eyes, but eventually Nanaba gets a hold on the string and turns on the fan a few seconds right after the bell signifying the start of second hour rings.

“Yes!” they exclaim in unison, and Nanaba throwing up their arms in victory almost topples both of them over. “Here, let me get down,” Nanaba tells Mike, and he crouches down so that Nanaba can hop off the perch on Mike’s shoulders. “Thanks Mike,” They say to Mike, and Mike just kind of nods. I’m pretty sure I like Nanaba more than Mike, just because when Mike talks it’s always about what we’re learning or something to do with smell…? I don’t judge, but I like Nanaba better.

Then again, it helps that I’ve been in their orchestras all high school long. Nanaba and Mike split up the hours so that Nanaba takes 2nd, 4th, and 6th hour and Mike takes 1st, 3rd, and 7th hour, with 5th hour as their free period. I’ve just always been in Nanaba’s classes because of how my schedule ends up working out. They’re pretty cool though, so it’s not like I mind. They are a little bit more in touch with modern day society than Mike is too.

“Okay everyone, I’m going to have you pass up all your old music now, and then we’ll tune and maybe do some fun stuff, okay?” Nanaba says when everyone is situated at their seats with their instruments, or at least close. “Start passing music up.” I get my orchestra folder out of my backpack and pull out the sheet music I used as a bassist for the last concert. When Nanaba says fun stuff, they’re probably talking about sight reading, which I guess is okay but maybe Nanaba forgot what fun means. Maybe they’ll at least give us a song to sight read that connects to pop culture or something. Maybe some Jazz, which would be cool because I’ve practiced with Jazz a lot before. I can really appreciate it.

The rest of orchestra passes with Nanaba having us actually get out a twister board or other games that the orchestra teachers had just in their room, some kids are given ‘This is Halloween’ music for their instruments if they want to play it, and our most recent concert (which we haven’t seen yet) is played on the smartboard on the front of the classroom at a more or less low volume. Overall it’s actually a pretty cool class period, no futures mentioned.

Every once in awhile Mike will pop in, spouting some random ass things to Nanaba about how his wife was complaining about something the other day, and Nanaba would counter it with a story about his dumbass boyfriend and his smelling kink. They do this a lot, and no one really knows why. It always _feels_ like they’re hinting at something, but I can never pick it up. I always feel a little bit like an idiot, like I’m a dog that they’re throwing a bone, but I haven’t realized it’s a bone yet. If that makes sense. It probably doesn’t. Whatever.

When second hour is over I move on to third hour, which both Connie and Sasha are in the same math class with me. Our math teacher, Mr. Erwin Smith, is the head of the math department and a damn scary motherfucker. He comes off as more or less benevolent at first, but once you’ve seen him when someone tries to disrespect him, or really just when he fucking flexes while reaching out to grab something, he notice that he could crush your skull with his thighs, no biggie (which a lot of people find a little bit hot, and I reserve the fifth on my view of the matter). I honestly feel like he could kill me in cold blood if he felt like it was something that he had to do, which terrifies the shit out of me.

Mr. Smith has an adopted son named Levi, who’s a sophomore in a local military college for the Navy. Apparently Levi wants to someday be a part of Seal Team 6, so it’s pretty easy to see that he’s following in his father’s footsteps. He also follows in his father’s footsteps in that he’s really fucking hot (which even though he technically didn’t inherit it from Mr. Smith because he’s adopted, I don’t care), which I can say without me having to be the gayest gay out there all of a sudden. It’s hard to deny, even if you want to. While I don’t have a secret crush on him or anything, Eren totally does.

Eren is in the same third hour math class with Sasha, Connie, and I, and there’s been a few times when Levi has come into class just in his free time, or when his dad needed something from their home, and Eren practically fucking drooled all over his desk and his schoolwork. Sometimes Levi comes in to have his dad help with his math, and sometimes he comes in just for the hell of it. When that’s the case, Mr. Smith has him help us because he’s already taken this course and he got an A.

Maybe Mr. Smith knows about how gay for his son Eren is, because he almost always assigns Levi to help Eren with what we’re learning.

That or Eren just really sucks at math. Wouldn’t surprise me, if I’m gonna be honest.

“Hello class,” Mr. Smith greets us when the bell that starts the hour rings and we’re all in our seats. “Now, because we finished our last unit earlier than I thought we would, we have a free day today. What I think we should do with it is I’m going to meet with you one - on - one, and we can talk about what I’ll be signing off on you taking next year. Alright?” His words are brisk and clear, and I think for maybe the millionth time over that Mr. Smith really should have gone into the military. He’d become a general for sure.

Without waiting for an affirmation, he calls up Eren as the first person he wants to meet with. Eren grimaces, and looks at me like he wants to die. Me too Eren, me too. The son of a bitch Jaeger starts walking off towards Mr. Smith’s desk in the back of the room with a definite sloop in his back and a look like he’s really not looking forward to this conversation he’ll bec having with Mr. Smith.

In the first quarter of the school year, we’re all given a course registration sheet from our counselors. What we’re supposed to do is write which courses we plan on taking the following year and we can only easily get in if our teachers sign off on it, saying that we can go ahead and we have their approval to take the class. You can do it anyway without the teacher’s approval, but you aren’t allowed to drop the class at quarter then, you have to wait until semester. We have to get all the signatures by second quarter’s end.

I’m just glad that I don’t have to mess with that shit anymore because I’m a senior. No more getting teachers to sign off on my course registration sheet, no more teachers looking over the rims of their glasses when they see I’ve decided to take regular classes and telling me that really I could take Honours if I wanted to, and no more making sure that I’m turning it in on time.

Honestly, I don’t know why Mr. Smith is meeting with Eren, because he’s a senior too. There’s a few juniors in this class, and about two sophomores (which kinda irks me but most of the time I ignore the fact that they exist). Because Eren’s a senior, he doesn’t need a sheet filled out. He just needs to figure out the rest of his life, like where he’s going to go to college if at all, and how the hell he’s going to manage to pay for that. Military academies aren’t that bad about cost though, and I know that he’s wanted to be in the marines for almost all of his life.

I decide that I’m going to take this class period to do my French homework, which I procrastinated doing until I woke up realizing I hadn’t done it, and I figured I would just go ahead and do it during lunch, which I have right before French. I have a free study hall period worked into my schedule every day during seventh hour, but I never really got to doing my French homework during it. I kinda did most of everything else and then decided to play games on my phone for the rest of the time. The teacher really doesn’t care all that much as long as we don’t bother her and maybe pretend to get some work done in the meantime.

Maybe about halfway through the math period (by then Eren has moved back to his seat, which is at a table where I’m sitting with Sasha and Connie), Levi walks in. Mr. Smith, just waves him towards Eren, and I wonder really what the hell is going on. I mean, I know that Mr. Smith is meeting with kids one on one at this point and that he maybe doesn’t have time for Eren, but does he just assume by now that Eren is so bad at math that Levi should just be sent to him right away? Is that an insult?

Even if it was, I don’t think Eren minds all that much. Levi pulls up a chair between Eren and I at the table, and asks in his low voice, “So what are you working on?” Eren, seeming like he wants to pull out his hair (one because of math and two because of how close to him Levi is), explains what we’re learning in a tired voice. Damn, he really is working on math. I thought he’d finished that worksheet in class the other day with me, but maybe I was wrong…?

No, I couldn’t be. I remember it was distinctly Eren who solved the last problem with me, a triumphant grin decorating both of our faces. He had finished the whole worksheet, so how the hell does he have a blank one and why is he pretending like he has no idea what to do? I realise in a few moments after that thought that Eren, though a stupid motherfucker who doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut and had obviously never seen an actual horse ever in his life, is actually a pretty clever piece of shit. Hot damn.

Then again, grabbing a blank worksheet from the folder Mr. Smith has for if you’re sick and pretending to be stupid so that you can talk to your crush more might not be cheeky or clever, it might just be a little bit desperate, maybe a little bit pathetic. I guess you just gotta do what you gotta do. Would I ever stoop to that level though? I don’t think so. I mean, I’ve gone pretty low before, but I don’t think quite _that_ low.

Or at least I haven’t stooped as low as Eren has in general, which is pretty damn low if you bother to ask me. Which most people don’t, but that’s their problem. Not mine.

As Levi explains something to Eren (“explains”), I start making suggestive faces at him. First it’s just a subtle wink, to catch his attention. He frowns at me. I just smirk, and sensually lick my lips like I want to devour him in a the dirtiest way he could ever imagine. Though I most definitely don’t see Eren that way, it’s pretty funny to act like that towards Eren, especially around Levi. With Levi near, he’s already kinda flustered and it’s pretty damn easy to make him even more so.

At one point Levi even puts his hand gently on Eren’s arm as if what he’s explaining is really important and maybe the skin connection will make Eren understand better. What’s funny is that Eren straight up looks like he just got touched by a legitimate angel and is ready to ascend into heaven, carried on the wings of his dark haired angel.

… He’s fucking disgusting.

A few minutes before the bell signifying the end of hour three and the start of our passing period, I get a notification on my phone. Because my earbuds are in, I hear it as I see it. A small square in the corner of the notification box, and then the caption _Bodtoms Up just published new video ‘Riptide - Vance Joy - Cover.’_ I feel my throat get a little dry, and I shove my phone into my pocket.

More about the whole ‘Bodtoms Up’ thing later. For now, I can’t afford to let one of the blushes I get while watching his videos on my face, because Eren will most definitely see it, and if he doesn’t then Connie will, and if he doesn’t then Sasha will, and whichever one of them that sees it will mention it to the others and then they will all know about my guilty pleasure. So not right now. Marco Bodt will just have to wait for me to watch his video. Not that he, you know, even knows or cares about my insignificant existence, but whatever.

Enough. I can feel my cheeks getting hot already. I can think about that later.

The bell rings, and I hurry to gather up my stuff for my class, Health and Fitness. It’s an okay fourth hour, but I didn’t choose it because I really like health. For me to graduate I need a health and fitness credit, and I kind of avoided getting it for years, imagining I would get it by doing summer school. Of course, as soon as summer would start that thought would leave my mind, leaving me with no Health and Fitness credit by senior year. If I didn’t have it I might have taken music tech, but instead I get to learn about health. Fun, right? Wrong, of course. Very wrong.

The whole hour passes by slowly, because Eren keeps texting me from his spot in his English class, and his problems are boring. He doesn’t know shit about things like grammar and sentence structure, even after having been taught those exact things for years. It goes in one ear and out the next, as they say. Then his other problem, Levi, which I refuse to listen to. I get that he’s really gay for our math teacher’s son, but he doesn’t need to remind me every single second of the day.

By the time fourth hour is over I feel like tearing out all of my hair from its spot in my head and maybe also grabbing my eyeballs and ripping them out of my head so that I don’t have to worry about seeing Eren drool over Levi anymore. I almost got my phone confiscated by my fourth hour teacher, Ms. Ilse Langar, because she almost caught me texting Eren to shut the hell up about Levi already.

After fourth hour I have first lunch, so I head towards the cafeteria. Eren has second lunch, and so does Connie and Mikasa, but Sasha and Ymir all have first lunch with me, and we all sit together. Connie was kind of jealous that I have lunch with Sasha and he doesn’t, so we make sure to send him a lot of annoying snapchats almost the entire lunch time. It’s only twenty five minutes to eat lunch, but it’s fine.

I had mostly finished my French homework during math, but I still have a few more questions left on the worksheet, so I pull it out whilst Ymir and Sasha complain about me ignoring them as if I am not actually sitting right next to them. There’s a word on the worksheet I don’t recognise, _susmentionné_ , so I pull out my phone to use WordReference and figure that shit out. I see the Youtube app and remember the new video, but ignore it. Apparently _susmentionné_ means aforementioned. Huh.

“Jeanbo! Pay attention to meeee!” Sasha wails in my ear, and I swear to god I almost snap a little bit on her. I mean, I just want to get my goddamn homework down so that I can turn it in when lunch is over, it’s nothing personal and I don’t want to be distracted. Now, tell me, is that too much to ask for? I don’t think so. I really don’t. I turn to her with a frown on my face.

“Unless you want to do my French homework for me, maybe you could stop?” I suggest, trying not to let all my bitterness fade into my tone. Sasha catches on, however, and pouts on me like a sad puppy. She mentions something about me being on my period under her breath when I turn back to my French homework, and I almost break the pencil I’m holding to do my homework with. I take a deep breath, and then continue. No need to get mad at friends, I have self control I promise. “C’mon, Sash,” I try to reason with her, “you know how Oluo is. He’ll get mad at me if my homework has a wrong answer, even more if it’s just unanswered.”

She bites the inside of her cheek, and sighs. Ymir starts trying to wheedle something out of Sasha, as if to distract her from me, and I’m grateful. Not really, because I really don’t want to do my French, but also grateful because it’s next fucking hour. Shit. Why do I do this to myself? Meanwhile, I think Ymir just convinced Sasha to buy her a lunch using Sasha’s student ID. That sly motherfucker.

Before lunch ends I manage to finish my homework, turning back to Ymir (eating a lunch bought for her by Sasha, which will never stop impressing me) and Sasha, who are talking about whether or not DC really is better than Marvel. “But Batman,” Ymir argues, “and Superman is literally unbeatable. Unbeatable! Not to mention Rachel Roth, and of course Rose Wilson is more impressive than any Marvel low key character.”

“But Chris Evans,” Sasha argues. “Like, I think it’s just a law of humanity that everyone is attracted to him. That’s gotta count for something.” She’s practically got hearts in her eyes at the thought of Chris Evans, and though I can’t blame her I can’t help but feel like maybe Connie would not like this conversation very much.

“You do realize that Chris Evans isn’t a Marvel character, right?” I join in. What can I say? I’m always going to be on the DC side. They both turn to me, and Sasha raises an eyebrow at me.

“Are you done being a cranky old man, Jean?” she asks, sipping at her water bottle like it’s a cup of lemon tea and she’s busy taking salty shit about some bitch who’s crossed her.

“Depends. Are you going to admit that DC is superior?” I ask in a reply, hoping that counts as an answer all by itself. That I’m not so stressed to finish a worksheet that I’m going to snap at her, that I’m more or less a little bit regretful for sort of snapping at her. That’s kind of how I’m like a lot of the time, but she should get the message anyway.

There’s a glint in her eye. “That’s not happening any time soon,” she promises. I smirk back at her.

“But Sash,” Ymir breaks in, “You like Chris Evans, right, but I was pretty sure you also liked Christian Bale a whole fuck ton. Right?” Sasha looks like she’s going to counter, but then she pauses with her mouth still agape like she’s thinking. Then it snaps shut. After a moment of contemplation, she starts talking again.

“You have  point…” she mutters, even going so far as to rub her chin. I’m just glad that I finished my homework, and all is well in the circle of friends between Sasha and I.

 

* * *

 

School that day ends with the bell sounding more upbeat than usual, or maybe that’s just how eager I am to get out of this hell known as public education. I run out of my seventh hour - a learning lab - like a fucking bat out of hell. Sasha and Connie and I are all going up to this local sculpture park (that we all nicknamed Amsterdam in seventh grade after Eren fucked up reading the actual name of the place) that’s fucking huge with a lot of little places to hide away and do whatever the hell we want to do. Most of the times that we hang out here, I’ll be honest, we’re smoking.

I know I know, smoking is bad for you. Trust me, I had the police officer come into my fifth grade class and show us pictures of smoker lungs, I had the police officer show us pictures of people before and after smoking, and I’ve heard about all the side effects. Multiple times, all throughout middle school and high school. Trust me, I am not this poor ignorant child who has no idea that smoking can be really fucking harmful to your body. I will promise, I know.

But with my life, I take what rebellion I can get. My parents give me only a small amount of wiggle room, and in that wiggle room I’m going to do as much as I fucking can. Not that I’m blaming it on my parents completely, though they do definitely contribute to the stress that sometimes drives me to smoke. But once again, I’m going to do as much as I can with what I got, even if I know that it might just fuck me up in the long run.

Connie and Sasha don’t have the same deal as me though. I think they just don’t actually give a shit.

They both ride the bus to school, but when we’re going up to Amsterdam I’ll give them a ride with me. First I have to drop off Eren and Mikasa at their house though, because I’m giving them rides both to and from school. Eren and Mikasa are both openly invited to come hang out with us at Amsterdam at any time, but Mikasa knows that we generally smoke there and won’t let Eren come within an a mile of Amsterdam. (Eren still sneaks out and comes with us to Amsterdam sometimes anyway, he doesn’t smoke though. He knows Mikasa would know in a second, and then he might as well be a right dead man.)

I find Connie and Sasha at the car, waiting outside it with Eren and Mikasa. “Why’d it take you so long, Jeanbo?” Connie coos. I flip him off, not even bothering to answer. He knows by now that my seventh hour class is kind of far away from the school parking lot spot that was assigned to me. He’s just being stupid for the pure sake of being stupid, which he admits to a lot so it’s not lie I’m even being rude and calling him stupid. He just cackles in a response to me flipping him the bird, and gets in the car when I unlock the doors.

On the way to Eren and Mikasa’s house Sasha tells us about how this girl in our class, Mina, approached her today and asked for her to buy her lunch because she saw Sasha buying Ymir lunch and Mina forgot her student ID at home. Even though, Sasha tells us, she felt like Mina might be bullshitting her, she would feel really bad if the girl went hungry because Sasha was doubtful.

“So basically,” I say at the end of her story, smirking a little bit, “You got tricked, more or less, into buying not one, but two people lunch in the same day. Good job, Sasha.” She frowns, and shakes her head.

“But what if she really had?! Then I’d be an awful person!” She exclaims. I’m about to tease her more, but then Mikasa talks.

“I’m confused. Why did you buy Ymir a lunch in the first place? I _know_ that she always has her student ID.”  I snort, and see Connie cackling a little bit in the back seat. Sasha throws up her hands into the air, acting like she’s all upset but I can catch a little smile creeping her way over her face.

“Honestly, I don’t even know anymore.”

We reach Mikasa and Eren’s house, and Eren lingers in the front seat. “Are you sure you don’t want to just come to Amsterdam with us, Eren?” I ask. “Mikasa too, if you want.” She just gives me a look like _nice try_  and Eren shrugs with a small sigh before hopping out of the shotgun seat in the car. I can tell he wants to, but maybe that will have to wait for another day.

“I’m cool. Bye horseface!” he yells, his idiotic grin stretching across his face like a banner. I give him a two fingered salute, pointedly ignoring how much and often he calls me horseface, and drive out of the driveway of Eren and Mikasa’s house only a few seconds after the door closes behind Eren. Connie and Sasha are still in the backseat, because they’re disgusting and like PDA more than me, apparently.

“Why do you always wait so long to leave, Jean?” Sasha complains. “Eren got out of the car like thirty seconds ago. You’re wasting tiiiime,” her voice is a little bit wailey,  and I try not to roll my eyes as Connie agrees with her. Why am I even friends with these lunatics? Why do I do this to myself time and time again? Maybe I just secretly hate myself.

“Because,” I start explaining while I’m driving down to Amsterdam, “I want to make sure they both get in before I leave. What if Mikasa pulled a practical joke on Eren and he needed help getting in? What if he came running out after he went in because someone killed his mom? We’d already be gone. We wouldn’t be able to help.” There’s a silence after I say that.

Then, Connie speaks up. “Jean, you’re kind of weirldy fucking paranoid, you know that?” I roll my eyes at him. A few seconds later, Sasha says something too.

“It’s… sweet though. Jean. I never knew you cared!” She exclaims dramatically. I let a small smile crawl it’s way over my lips. “Aw, Jean, I feel so appreciated! So validated!” She keeps going on.

“How do you know I care for you? What if I just care for Eren? What if I’m secretly in love with Eren, and I hate you and I just haven’t told you?” I ask her, my tone revealing that there is no chance in hell I could be secretly in love with Eren fucking Jeager of all people.

“Oh come on,” Connie says, “If you’re in love with Eren then Ymir is straight, and the moon landing was real.” I feel my eyebrows furrow.

“Connie… the moon landing _was_ real,” I tell him.

“Yeah Con,” Sasha agreed with me.

“I don’t think so, that’s just giant load of bullshit, okay?” he replies. I blink a few times rapidly in confusion.

“Con man, no matter how you try and spin it, the moon landing was real.” He snorts.

“That’s what the government wants you to think, Jean, but I can promise you it’s a lie. A lie! A conspiracy!” I actually let out a laugh this time, snorting and shaking my head sa we get closer to Amsterdam. This conversation about whether or not the moon landing was faked or not finds it way to hold on till we pull up to the back entrance of Amsterdam.

We hardly ever come in the front entrance, mainly just out of habit. I live really close to Amsterdam, within five minute walking distance, but my house is on the road that leads to the back entrance, not the front. There’s been so many times of us being at my house and then deciding to go over to Amsterdam that we’re just used to going through the back entrance by this point in time. “Fuck yeah, finally!” Connie whoops.

As we get out we all without thinking start going in the same direction, which is this one sculpture that stretches throughout a part of the forest in this park, a set of metal spheres each about the size of a smart car and connected by chains running through them, giving the sculpture the look of a snake from above. We just kinda like the privacy of the trees, and we’ve grown up hopping from the tops of the big metal spheres to the next ones, running on top of the sculptures and ignoring every single one of the ‘NO CLIMBING ON THE SCULPTURE’ signs in the whole fucking park.

Of course, there’s other sculptures in the park other than the snake/big metal spheres one. There’s one that’s just this weird fucking metal like box that kind of reminds me of a jungle gym that I’ve definitely climbed on. There’s one of a motorcycle in this pavilion, there’s one with a bunch of red metal tubes bigger than my house assembled in a way that looks like it’s always about to fall over. There’s several more, obviously, but those are some of the most memorable ones I guess. The red one is kind of harder to climb on, but Sash, Con, and I have done so before many times over.

It’s a good thing my mom just thinks that I find sculptures to be cool shit, and that she likes Connie and Sasha, or she might start to suspect what we do when we’re going over to Amsterdam almost every other day some weeks. Maybe she just considers it our edgy teen hangout spot, because sometimes she’ll be goofy about calling it something along those lines. I don’t really care what she thinks, as long as she doesn’t think I spend a lot of my time smoking at Amsterdam with my friends.

She also doesn’t understand why we call it Amsterdam. She just rolls with it. I’ve never known whether I should be grateful of that or not. I mean, it sure is convenient that she isn’t questioning what I might be doing at Amsterdam, but you know the thing where your parents try a bit too hard to sound like, I don’t know, trendy teens or something? That’s kind of how it feels when she talks about Amsterdam.

I’m probably being a bad kid again. Eh, whatever.

“Hey Con, you mentioned that you got another pack the other day, right?” I ask.

“Oh yeah, you did,” Sasha joins in. He rolls his eyes, but pulls out a pack of cigarettes, already opened.

“You leeches. You two should know that you’re lucky I like you, or I would never let you have some without charging you.” He gives both of us a cigarette, and sticks one in his teeth as I pull out my lighter. “Light me up, would you?” He asks.

“Me too,” Sasha requests, and I snort a little bit.

“Okay fine, but for the record Sasha you need to start bringing forward, I don’t know, chips or something. Connie provides cigarettes, I provide the lighter, so you need to provide for us too.” I say the words with a little bit of teasing evident in my tone.  She rolls her eyes at that anyway, sucking in a nicotine filled breath and then blowing it out dangerously close to my face.

“Oh please, how much does a lighter fucking cost you? If anything, Connie’s the real backbone of this friendship.” Connie nods, but I shake my head while puffing out some smoke, multi - tasking and climbing up onto a sphere in the process of doing so.

“But who drove you two here? Me. I provide a car, and I don’t ask for gas money. I’m the real backbone.” Connie snorts, and Sasha comes up onto the sphere next next to me. He accepts her hand in helping get up on the sphere, so that we’re all sitting up on the sphere together, blowing up smoke at the sky.

“Okay, so we’re tied for first. But what are you contributing, Sash?” He asks, receiving an elbow in the ribs for that from Sasha. She flips her hair in its ponytail at that again.

“I bring my sparkling personality and friendship to the table, obviously,” she says. “And if you want to get laid anytime soon, Connie, I’d stop questioning what I bring to this friendship, yeah?” His eyes widen, and he nods very enthusiastically.

“O - okay! Sasha is the best friend, a total backbone of the friendship! All hail the queen!” He’s a bit over dramatic, but I still laugh.

“You know what, for the sake of Connie’s blue balls I’ll agree.” I hold my cigarette out in between my pointer finger and my middle finger, up towards the sky like a mock toast. “All hail queen Sasha.” They echo me, Sasha smirking, and hold their cigarettes up too to honour my mock toast. Then we all inhale deeply, silence filling the air along with the deathly smoke as we exhale shakily in a sacred unison.

 

* * *

 

When I get back home, it’s after driving Sasha and Connie home, even though Connie literally lives two houses down from me. Whatever, he wanted to go with me while dropping off Sasha and his house was on the way. Sasha teased me when I was dropping her off at her house, by taking a long time to get to her door and then blowing me a kiss, saying, “I’m safe, Jean! Aw, you caring friend, what a sweetheart.” I flipped her off before driving away, shaking my head at her antics.

“Hey, man, that’s my girlfriend,” Connie says, a frown on his face. He’s climbed up to the shotgun seat at that point, and raise my eyebrow.

“Your girlfriend’s a bitch, Con,” I tell him. He opens his mouth, then closes it.  
“I’m not saying you have a point there, but…” He trails off, and I snort and nod.

“Damn right.”

It’s a good thing he doesn’t linger while going to his front door like Sasha did, or I might just have blood on my hands. When I finally get home, it’s about six thirty. My mom is trying to me all homey and has this whole dinner cooked up, which  I guess is sweet but I’ll end up eating by myself in my room anyway. They generally eat at our kitchen table together, while I end up eating in my room. I’m not exactly sure how that started happening, but it’s good for avoiding conflict. I get kicked out of the house way less when I’m just eating in my own room, and contact with my parents isn’t all that high.

It really is a good time that Connie lives two houses down from me, because otherwise I would have just outright slept in my backyard way too many times. I don’t particularly enjoy the feeling of bugs crawling in my hair, thank you very much. I also really don’t like snow in my clothes, or leaves in the Autumn, or really I just don’t like mother nature messing with me while I sleep. Is that too much to ask for?

Though, I’m sort of making it out to sound like I’ve been kicked out of my house a whole bunch of times. I haven’t, not really. There’s been about five times throughout the past three or four ish years when I’ve been kicked out for the night. The longest I’ve ever stayed away after being kicked out was three days at Connie’s, and my mom came and found me there when I had her blocked on my phone so that she couldn’t message me. Usually it’s over stupid things just piling up, I guess, and maybe I’m not the most respectful kid towards his parents out there. Guilty as charged. It’s not like it’s just my parents fault.

I’m a little bit bad at communication, if that isn’t obvious.

My mom looks up when I walk through the door. “Did you go to Amsterdam with Sasha and Connie again?” She asks. I cringe internally. I really don’t know why, but when she calls that sculpture park Amsterdam it just sounds so weird, so foreign. I’m probably being a bad kid _again_ . Well shit. I just nod to her, and she smiles at me. It’s times like these when I feel guilty for how bitter I am usually to my parents. Sometimes my mom will just be so soft, so … unbearable _human._ I can’t help but love my parents, even if they’re dicks sometimes to me.

“I’m probably just going to eat dinner in my room, okay mom?” I say, and she just nods, sighing out a little bit, I can tell it’s been a rough day at her job for her,and I want to tell her thank you for making me dinner, but I never did say I was a stellar person. I just give her a small smile as I take the plate of food and retreat into my room to procrastinate homework. She seems to deflate a little bit as I go down the stairs of my house into the basement, where my bedroom is. There’s a few rooms down in our basement, and the big one with a library on one end is mine.

I used to be up in this room with a window near a tree, but when my parents realised I was sneaking out a lot at night they out of nowhere told me I was being moved to the basement. No windows down here, am I right? Well, there is one, but it’s about as big as my face. So I would have to climb up creaky basement stairs and then go past my parents bedroom on the first floor to sneak out, and that is much harder than it sounds.

At least there’s a bathroom down here, so I don’t have to go upstairs if I gotta go. How convenient.

I flop down onto my bed the second I get into my room, my backpack flopping on top of me and knocking the breath out of my lungs. “Oof,” I groan under all the weight of that hell called school. What the actually fuck, like why does my backpack weigh so much? Sasha’s actually curves both inwards where her back is and in the bottom of it. She often jokes that her backpack has more curves than she does (which I try to ignore, because usually then Connie decided it’s always a good time for PDA and making sure that Sasha along with everyone nearby knows that he cares literally zero percent about the fact that Sasha doesn’t have huge fucking E cup boobs).

After a second of suffering in silence, I sit up and shrug my backpack off me, making it land on the floor with a booming sound. Again, why the fuck. This should be illegal. I look at the backpack, and then at my wall across the room with my acoustic guitar hanging on the it. Which do I choose…? Okay, that isn’t even a real debate. Obviously I’ll pick music over my homework, any day. Which reminds me of -

-The notification. It said ‘Bodtoms Up’ had released a cover on his channel.  A cover. Like, a song.

And they say perfect people don’t exist. Well, I suppose I can’t say that till I’ve watched the video. I pull my phone out from my pocket, and even though it’s at 30 percent I think I can just wait till I’ve watched the video to charge it. After all, the charger is across the room near my desk and I’m on my bed so why would I do that to myself when I can stay comfortable? I wouldn’t, that’s the answer.

The video is pulled up with me trying to hide my excitement, though it’s not like there’s anyone down in my room to hide it from. Still, I’m allowed my pride. I mean, I’m not allowed to go to sleep early because of homework, I’m not allowed to sleep in during the morning because of school, I’m not allowed to tell my parents that I want to pursue a career in music because I’m a pussy, but I am allowed my pride at least. Like hell I’m going to let go of it, even if it’s just me.

It starts with the screen being white, and then a stop motion display of the words ‘Riptide - Original by Vance Joy - cover by Marco Bodt’ appear on the screen in the form of blue watercolour paper and black pen. Oh god. Jesus take the wheel, I’m not driving no more. Then Marco appears on the screen, holding a beautiful dark brown wood ukulele. He bites his lip, looking up at the screen, and starts strumming the chords. He doesn’t use a pick, I notice. Interesting. And here I thought he didn’t play any instruments.

Then he starts singing, and I might be dying a little bit. Just a bit.

 

_I was scared of dentists and the dark_

_I was scared of pretty girls and starting conversations_

_Oh, all my friends are turning green_

_You're the magician's assistant in their dream_

 

I feel a little bit like maye hitting myself in the face when he sings the first verse. He’s avoiding looking at the camera, I can tell, and I notice how well I can see his freckles despite the light shining on him. Fuck. I think he’s playing a concert ukulele, which I approve of because sopranos are just not for me man. He’s a little bit hesitant with his voice, but I can still tell that I like it already. He’s never posted a video of him doing a cover before. Oh god. I approve. I click the like button before I’m even thirty seconds into it.

Whether or not I am blushing like a goddamn maniac at the way his arms manage to flex while he’s playing the ukulele does not matter. At all. I am stupid, and sometimes I just… get hot. I’m not actually blushing. No. God no. Definitely not.Why would I blush? It’s not like I find Marco Bodt to be incredibly attractive. Nope. Not at all. Nuh uh. You can’t pin anything on me.

 

_Oh, oh, and they come unstuck_

 

His voice hits the pitches perfectly right. What the fuck. Is he really warmed up? Does he just have really fucking good range? Why the hell is his voice so nice? I want to stab my eyes out with a fork, or maybe a spoon, maybe a spork because of this video. It’s so good and I’m dying a lot. Okay, Okay. I need to calm down. It’s just a fucking cover of a song. I mean, it’s a cover of _Riptide._ Every youtuber who plays the ukulele and their son’s ex wife has made a cover of this song.

… Still, It’s really good. I can appreciate it a lot.

 

_Lady, running down to the riptide_

_Taken away to the dark side_

_I wanna be your left hand man_

 

Oh my god. I want to be ignored. I want to be deleted from existence. I realise a second too late that I’ve pressed my duvet into my mouth as a weird sort of gag to stop freaking out over the video, and it has gross saliva on it now. Fuck. Ew. The things this youtuber does to me, God. I should be deleted. Can my existence by deleted? Please?

God? Satan? I don’t really care at the moment.

… If you exist I promise I’m joking. Please ignore my pitiful existence.

 

_I love you when you're singing that song and_

_I got a lump in my throat 'cause_

_You're gonna sing the words wrong_

 

When he sings the words ‘I love you’ I think I die a little bit inside. He’s not the type to be all ‘thank you so much to my subscribers, I love each and every one of you,’ because he says the viewer might be a serial killer and he honestly doesn’t love a serial killer. So I haven’t really heard him ever say those words again. I think if God exists he made those words to be spoken - or sung, whatever - on Marco Bodt’s lips.

 

_There's this movie that I think you'll like_

_This guy decides to quit his job and heads to New York City_

_This cowboy's running from himself_

_And she's been living on the highest shelf_

 

I take a deep breath. I know how this song is going. I know what all the lyrics are (because honestly, who has ever existed in a car with the radio on and not at some point heard the song Riptide? No one? Yeah, I thought so) and I know that he’s going to sing the high part again. This video might just be the death of me, I catch myself thinking. Just maybe. Perhaps.

 

_Oh, oh, and they come unstuck_

 

I desire death. I wish that Marco’s voice was a liquid so that I could drink it, or drown in it. That might be my preferred way of going. Death by hot guy singing a song with his hot voice and biting his lip every time he does something that excites him. He’s far more confident now, singing louder and playing with more reckless abandon in his eyes than at the start of the video. I’m not an idiot, and I’ve fallen in love before (another story for another time), but I think I might have fallen in love with Marco singing, if that makes any sense or doesn’t sound too cheesy.

You know what, fuck that. It _does_ sound too cheesy. Fuck me. In the ass. Why not.

 

_Lady, running down to the riptide_

_Taken away to the dark side_

_I wanna be your left hand man_

 

Let us all take a moment to salute Jean, I think, a soldier throughout this video and watching it without thinking more than ten dirty thoughts about the way Marco side eyes the camera every few seconds, or closes his eyes so that he can hit the high notes. Honestly maybe one of my more respectable accomplishments, okay. It’s something I’m sure more than one person could congratulate me on, if they ever even saw one picture of the greek god that is Marco Bodt.

 

_I love you when you're singing that song and_

_I got a lump in my throat 'cause_

_You're gonna sing the words wrong_

 

I’ve got a lump in my throat too, Marco. Because you’re hot. Wait, no. I didn’t think that. Oh, fuck that, yes I did. Could anyone blame me though? He’s wearing an unbuttoned light blue jean shirt over a soft threadbare grey shirt, and I think he drew on his hands because there’s a bunch of triangle and hexagon designs intricately strewn across his hands through to his wrists. For some reason, the pattern on his skin reminds me of falling down. Maybe of falling and never getting up again. Shit, Marco choosing to make a cover was a very good idea, no matter how mainstream Riptide is, I honestly couldn’t care less.

 

_I just wanna, I just wanna know_

_If you're gonna, if you're gonna stay_

 

His voice breaks a little at that. The smallest of cracks, but so noticeable and somehow adding even more to the song. I wonder if he knew while filming that this was going to make me ears orgasm, because shit that’s what’s going on man. Do my ears count as vagina ears because they’re orgasming multiple times? That’s a weird thought. Maybe I should calm down. Maybe I shouldn’t. I don’t know.

I feel a little bit more like dying, just because he did the little fingerpicking part almost perfectly. Like, actually what the hell? I think it should be illegal for humans to be perfect, and though I don’t want to make Marco illegal I think he should definitely be warned that he is making me question my sexuality too much. I never asked for this. I literally never asked for this.

When I found Marco Bodt on youtube, it was through a video of him doing a book review for the book ‘We All Looked Up’ by John Wallach. I had read the book before, and I wondered what his thoughts were on it. I assumed from just looking at the cover of the video that he was just another attractive guy on youtube with millions of twelve year old subscribers who will stop watching him once he turns thirty five and isn’t considered hot to them anymore.

And damn, was I wrong. For one, he actually has a strangely older age group of people who watch him. They tend to be more eighteen and up, actually. Maybe that’s why he has 300,000 subscribers and not 3,000,000 twelve year olds. He does a lot of skits and little funny videos with people that make fun of the way a lot of the world is seen. Some of them are more contemplative, and some of the are more funny, but they’re all good in the end.

Maybe it was when I watched that book review that I realized I really enjoyed Marco Bodt, and his view of the world. Not innocent, not ignorant, but kind just the same. Not too young, like seventeen, but not thirty. He’s actually in his second year of college, which I know from watching one of the few Q and A videos that he does. And I definitely approved of the way he reviewed ‘We All Looked Up.’

 

_I just gotta, I just gotta know_

_I can't have it, I can't have it any other way_

_I swear she's destined for the screen_

_Closest thing to Michelle Pfeiffer that you've ever seen, oh_

 

I think maybe that I enjoy the sound of these words on Marco’s lips more than in the original. Maybe that’s just my own personal bias coming in to say hello, but I think that maybe Marco has just proved to everyone that he actually is perfect, and who am I to pretend that doesn’t affect me? God, am I reacting too much over just a cover to a song? Nah, I don’t think there could be a too much with Marco. I mean, he’s like an actual god.

The little ‘oh’ vaults off his tongue like a fucking white flag or a flare gun, soft and it makes me think of T.S Eliot. Maybe my whole mind is a run on sentence. My whole existence. Either way, he makes me think of the poem ‘The Hollow Men.’ _This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper._ I’m getting way too poetic about a simple cover of a popular song, I know, but I can’t help it. When a person has a celebrity crush things get a little bit harder to manage. Sanity being one of those things.

 

_Lady, running down to the riptide_

_Taken away to the dark side_

_I wanna be your left hand man_

 

His voice is doing the chorus as the harmonies, and I think I love it more than I love myself. Granted, I don’t love myself all that much, but that doesn’t take away from how much I love Marco singing a cover of the song everyone heard on the radio over the summer and sang along to, the song that everyone still recognises if you play it at a party. The song I used to kind of make fun of for being mainstream but now I couldn’t appreciate more if I tried to.

The sound of his vocal chords is a bit more strained, the higher notes he’s going for the harmonies betraying him and cracking a little bit, which I of course can not help but love. Oh lord, I’m a desperate son of a bitch. Maybe I need to be slapped in the face. I saw somewhere that the desire you sometimes get to crush cute things is because your brain can’t find a way to handle the cute thing, so the natural desire is to destroy it so that your brain doesn’t have to struggle with understanding it and processing it.

I think that’s my problem here, except since the cute thing is impossible for me to destroy I’m settling for wanting to die myself. Oh god.

 

_I love you when you're singing that song and_

_I got a lump in my throat 'cause_

 

I wonder for a second if perhaps I’m freaking out too much. I can tell he’s about to finish because he was doing the harmonies and there’s only about ten seconds left of the video, and then he does something I didn’t expect. He finishes strumming, mutes the sound from his beautiful dark brown ukulele, and stares straight at the camera, before singing the last line of the song with his eyes looking like the stars.

 

_You're gonna sing the words wrong_

 

He bites his lip again, looking down with a trace of uncertainty on his face. Then he looks up at the camera again, in complete silence and just fucking _smiles_. Just smiles like his face is the sun or his brain is heaven and nothing could ever be bad again. Like life is full of wonder and the same ache and zeal to explore could be found in his eyes as there is in the average hipster teenager.

And then the video ends. I click the cancel button for the autoplay, and read his summary for the video. Something about how he knows the song has been done by everyone, but it’s okay because now he can be part of everyone now. Also his good friend did Henna on his hands, does everyone like it? I find myself breathing like I’ve been holding my breath. Maybe I have, I honestly don’t even know anymore. If it isn’t obvious, I’m definitely in over my head. I think I created a youtube channel just so I could subscribe to Marco Bodt, and that might be a little bit weird if I’m letting me be honest with myself.

I read some of the comments on the video, which already has 100,000 views and 400 comments. 700 likes too. And it was only uploaded earlier today. Well shit. I guess I’m just another crazed, adoring fan judging by the comments. A fuck ton of them are about how cute the smile at the end was, and almost every single one says that he needs to do more cover videos. I full - heartedly agree with that. Him not uploading more videos with him using those arms - oh my god - to play the uke and using that gift from above called his voice might as well be listed as another one of the numerous sins the church has established.

Oops, I’m getting a bit too edgy. I might need to back off a little. Calm down, Jean.

I look at the reply button. Fuck yeah.

 

* * *

 

The next day at school I spend way too much time writing random little couplets or something in my notebooks. All throughout English class I catch my teacher snooping over my shoulder, and I make sure every time to cover up the little rhymes with my hands each time, as if I was just casually resting my hand on the desk. Yeah, I see you, Mrs. English Hag. Maybe you should fuck off and mind your own business before you look over my shoulder like some uncultured fucking swine, yeah?

Connie catches me writing too, but he isn’t rude enough to just peek over the way our teacher was. Instead he asks to see what I’m writing. I’ve written a few lines of some random shit, I don’t know man. I’ve just got a melody in my head and a few patterns of rhyming I’m trying to keep. I let him see it, cause why the hell not, it’s not like he can judge me when he used to make me read his emo poetry in seventh grade.

_We’re the cutthroat civilisation / We’ve got time on our hands and more debt ‘cause of them / We’re the amputated needy nation / Selling our souls along with our minds / We’re the sophisticated rise of inflation / Raised on rebellion and with ammunition to spare / We’re the antichrist love of sake / And we’re all too ready to say that we’re taken._

He raises an eyebrow at it, and we’re only a few minutes from the bell ringing. “You know, Jean, I think you’re better at songwriting than you say you are,” he tells me, sounding way more serious than he usually is. I open my mouth to respond when his words hit me. I expected… I don’t know, not that. Maybe I thought that he would laugh in my face, and tell me that maybe I’m going through my emo phase this time. I didn’t think that he would tell me that I was… good.

“Wait what?” I finally ask, having been frozen in place for a few moments. He looks at me like I’m moderately crazy - which I wouldn’t deny it if he accused me because honestly, yeah probably - and claps me on the back lightly in the stereotypical ‘I’m a heterosexual friend trying to be supportive’ way. I blink twice hard with each time his hand hits my back, still mildly stunned.

“Jean. You’re good. Way better than I ever was, anyway,” he laughs, taking his hand away and putting his backpack on. I start to pack up for next hour as well while he keeps talking to me. “What? Did you expect me to not recognize the fact that you have actual talent? I’ve been trying to tell you that for years, Jean. Years.” I struggle to formulate a reply in my head. He… honestly thinks I’m good? I don’t know why I’m finding this so surprising, because he really has been the epitome of a supportive friend for years. I just… I don’t know. Expected something along the lines of what I would get from my parents. Something about how music is okay as a pastime, but not realistic to pursue as a career choice.

You know, you would think that by now I would know not to associate Connie’s levels of asshole - ness with my parent’s levels of asshole - ness.

“Do you… think I should keep writing it?” I ask. He looks at me like I’m a little bit stupid, and tells me that I _definitely_ should, or I would be wasting all my talent. According to him I have a brilliant mind. I mean, the IQ tests don’t exactly say that, but I suppose Connie can say what he wants to and believe what he wants to. He always has, after all. Maybe one of my favorite things about him is that he has a free mind. We all give ourselves chains in life, and he has thrown as many of them that he can off. What a guy, am I right?

The bell rings, and I find myself doodling little lyrics on my arms in Orchestra. I have to pull up my jacket sleeves, but I’m not going to dare to write on Nanaba’s precious music that they pass out. The Violin 1’s always need the most work at the beginning of the song (and usually always, if I’m being honest), so us bassists have some free time. One of the girls with an awful haircut that she can never seem to fix hidden away in a snapback spends most of that time on snapchat or reddit. Another bassist reads, he’s a pretty cool guy actually.

But me? What do I spend my time doing when I could be looking at the music and reading ahead so that when it is time for the basses to play I sound really good, really prepared? I draw emo lyrics on my arm. Maybe I need help. Maybe I don’t. But I do know that the entire hour, no matter the fact that we’re learning this beautiful baroque piece, I have the sound of Marco Bodt singing Riptide and playing his (probably) concert ukulele stuck in my head.

It’s okay, though, because at the end of the hour Nanaba comes around to me and tells me that my arm looks really fucking cool. I guess they got a look at it while directing the violas during that one tricky part in measure thirty six. Because of how small our orchestra room is, the basses end up playing behind the violas in the orchestra room, but in the right place when we’re on stage. It’s a little bit confusing, but it’s whatever. I tell Nanaba thanks, but I answer no when they ask if I want to be a tattoo artist or something. They say that’s too bad, because if I did there was a friend of Nanaba’s that they could direct me to for help in that field. I tell them thanks anyway.

I swear, Nanaba is so fucking cool. They sometimes let us just tell stories the entire class period, and they have the coolest backstories from when they were in college or other parts of their life. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder how someone with that much life, that much skill, and that much determination ended up just being a music teacher at some run of the mill public high school. Once, someone asked Nanaba something along those lines, and they just shrugged. “I fell in love,” they replied.

During lunch I tease Sasha about the whole lunch thing, and Ymir asks her how she even let herself be convinced twice to buy people - with their own money - lunch when she could have just told them to fuck off. “I thought you liked food, Sasha,” I say, contributing. She sighs, and looks at me. I raise an eyebrow, not letting her get to me. I know how fake her glare is. She can’t fool me.

“You know what, Jean, we all make choices. Some of them are bad ones. I made a bad decision the other day. You make a bad decision every time you go to get a haircut and always get that one. Who’s really the idiot here?” I gape, my mouth falling open and Ymir cackling to Sasha in the background. Oh god. I just got fucking owned. Things just got far too real far too fast.

“Jean, she just fucking _burned_ you,” Ymir comments, as if I couldn’t tell. I don’t even know what to say. Sasha’s fake glare eases off her face like ice melting under the warm breeze of a summer promised by spring, and she assures me that she was joking. I should be used to this by now, she burns me all the time. Most of the time by calling my dick small in one way or another. She can be a bitch sometimes, honestly. Like, I love her and all, but that doesn’t change the fact that sometimes she decides it’s time to absolutely roast her friends and I’m usually the one that she roasts for _no reason at all._ It’s okay. It’s fine. I’m fine.

Fine. My hair doesn’t feel personally attacked at all in the slightest.

In French class Mr. Oluo Bozado makes me feel like actually just going ahead and dying, because French five honours should be illegal to inflict on someone. The literal only class that I’m in honours for is French, and that’s because I’ve been speaking it since I was born. I can speak it moderately well, as my mom is a fluent speaker and we go back to France to visit the French family every other year. I just don’t read and write it all that well. I guess I have a somewhat unfair advantage over my other classmates in French, but hey I’m going to take what I can get. And in a world that I don’t get much in, every little scrap of something counts.

I manage to make it through French with only one bit of homework, which should be easy. I just have to listen to the next podcast in this playlist Mr. Bozado created which consists of random podcasts by native French speakers. Like I’ve mentioned before, I’m pretty good at the listening part of French. What we do is listen to the podcast and then have to talk about it the next day all in French, meaning you had to have listened to it in order to understand. He’s able to tell if you didn’t, and though it’s marked down in participation anyway. Any words we don’t know we are supposed to look up in WordReference, though that can be fairly difficult at times when French decides to have five letters to make one sound the way it likes to sometimes.

Then it’s Science with Hange. They’re actually pretty fucking cool most of the time too, like Nanaba. Though sometimes they can be a bit over - excited about things, and sometimes what they do is a little bit obnoxious, most of the time they’re a pretty cool human being to be around. The cool thing about them, though, is that despite the fact that I have detested taking science classes all throughout my educational career, they have managed to make science class in my senior year mostly enjoyable.

When they come over to see what I’m devoting my attention to instead of the notes we’re taking, (though I know Eren will just take a picture of his and send them to me, I don’t have to worry about actually working in class. That or Connie or Sasha will), they see the lyrics scribbled all over my arms and my pages that I should be taking science notes on. “Huh,” they mutter under my breath. “That’s cool Jean,” they comment, before walking away and continuing with teaching us about what we should be taking notes on. They don’t even ask me to pretend to pay attention to the lesson. Maybe they know I’m a lost cause? Or maybe they just respect what I do with my time and that I can make my own choices, so what if they’re bad ones (I try and push away what Sasha said to me about my haircut while we were at lunch from my head at that thought).

I have a learning lab seventh hour, in which I text Eren to send me a picture of his his science notes and do the homework I spent free time in class writing lyrics in. A learning lab is just a study hall, which might be a gift from the lord up high himself. I receive a text midway through the learning lab form Connie that he and Sasha are walking home so I don’t have to worry about driving them or anything. I text him back that it would take a lot of groveling from Sasha for me to drive them after her comment about my hair. When he asks me what the hell she said about my hair, I just tell him to ask her instead. What seems like a second late lets me know that he agrees with Ymir in that Sasha totally fucking burned me and tells me to stop being butthurt about the fact that she’s better at roasting than me.

I tell him he can go fuck himself with a banana. He tells me that he already gets enough fucking when he’s around Sasha, thank you very much. Then he says I’m just jealous ‘cause I haven’t gotten action since I broke up with that last rebound girl. Ouch. Connie sure knows how to pick his battles, and I sure don’t.

By the time seventh hour is over I have almost all my homework finished, even the French (thank god for earbuds, am I right?), and I’m ready to collapse into my bed and maybe scream into my pillow. Why was school even invented? I think this should be outlawed, it falls somewhere underneath our bill of rights I think. Something about ‘no cruel and unusual punishment’ seems to ring a bell. Talking about ringing bells, I am so ready for the bell signifying the end of seventh hour to ring already. The last five minutes have felt like five eons, I just want to get out of this prison. Is that too much to ask for? I don’t think so. Not really. At all.

The bell rings, and I am out of that classroom like a fucking man on the run. I don’t care how ridiculous I look pushing through the crowds of people already in the halls with my weird way of running, I just want to get to my car, drive Eren and Mikasa home faster than usual maybe, and get to my room and die a little bit and - oh. Oh. _Oh._

Eren is already at my car, and Mikasa isn’t thank god. Why thank god? Because Levi has Eren pushed up against the shotgun door, kissing him and licking into his mouth like a drowning man searching for air,though maybe that metaphor is counterproductive saying as how little amounts of air they both must be getting with how little they’re separating. I feel my nose scrunch up. Really Eren? And against my car? Isn’t there any better place for them to do … that?  Levi moves his hands down to cup Eren’s ass and Eren moans - a sound I never wanted to hear ever - so I decide it’s definitely time to stop and move on because oh my motherfucking god in heaven my innocence is ruined. My _car_ is ruined. How can I drive it now? Without thinking of Eren and Levi making out? _Ugh._

“Okay, Okay, as much as I’m really loving the show, we’ve got to get a move on Eren. Or at least you do, Levi, before Mikasa comes and sees you grabbing Eren’s ass.” They separate in a flash, Eren heaving with bright red cheeks and Levi having the decency to look at least a little bit uncomfortable in the situation. What? Were they expecting me to not come up and see them? Or not come up at all? It’s my fucking car. Honestly. I’m starting to think that they both have much less brains than most people give them credit for. “Well?” I ask when neither of them move much past just the general separation. Does Eren not understand that Mikasa could easily come and see him like this literally any second?

“Yeah, okay,” Eren mutters. ‘Um, bye Levi. I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” His words are quiet, but I still hear it. Today is a friday, so that means that they’re getting together past Levi chancing into Mr. Smith’s room. Does that mean… does that imply… is my little Eren going to go on a date? With Levi? The boy that he’s been drooling over for so long at this point?

“Oooo, get some Eren,” I shoot at him, and he flips me off without turning back to look at him. I snort, and get into the driver’s side of the car, shutting the door before I can hear what Levi replies with. They’re facing each other, foreheads touching, and Eren nods once at what Levi says. Then Levi pulls Eren down by his collar (sometimes I forget that Levi is shorter than Eren and I literally die of laughing most of the times that I remember it) and kisses him a quick, chaste amount. Then Levi shoves his hands in his jacket pockets and walks away with his back slumped (which maybe I should tell him really does nothing for how tall he looks). “So, are you going to tell me about that?” I ask when Eren gets into the shotgun seat.

He shakes his head. “Not yet. I… I want to hold onto it by myself, and let it just be between the two of us for a day, you know?” I chuckle a little bit, secretly proud of Eren that somehow he managed to wrangle in the boy he’s been thirsting over for a while. I notice Mikasa walking up from the driver’s side of the car (which is good because that lowers the chance of her having seen Eren and Levi sucking face against my car).

“Aw, Eren. I didn’t take you as an insufferable sap,” I tease him, to which he replies with flipping me off again for the second time in the last seven minutes. “It’s okay, man, I get it,” I then say, in a more serious tone. He nods. “Oh, and Mikasa is about … maybe fifteen seconds from getting in the car, so I’d try to calm down that schoolgirl blush from your face, yeah?” He frowns, but follows my advice and schools his expression. Only a few seconds later Mikasa gets in the car. I counted. It was thirteen seconds, so I was two off. Damn it. That’s kind of disappointing. Whatever, I guess I’ll try and be more accurate next time.

I drive them home in a stilted silence, conversation very brief and fleeting. I think Mikasa can tell that something is up, but doesn’t know quite what it is yet. I hope for Eren’s sake that the son of a bitch (no offense, Mrs. Jaeger) is better at keeping secrets than I think he is, because if Mikasa finds out that Levi was sucking Eren’s face against my car then Levi might be found dead facedown in a river and that’d be kinda messy. Mikasa has this tendency to be really protective of her friends, yeah, but way more protective of Eren. He’s her adoptive brother, so I guess that makes sense, but it can be kind of scary at times. Once she scared off Eren’s homecoming date because Mikasa thought that she was a hoe. I mean, Mikasa was right, but she still shouldn’t have scared off Eren’s homecoming date. He was mad at her for that for an entire two weeks later.

How long would Eren be mad if Mikasa scared off Levi? I mean, he’s been lusting and pining after that intense midget for a while, and maybe it would take a month for him to forgive her. Maybe longer? But then, that’s assuming Mikasa could scare off Levi. She’s scary, yeah, but he is too. I think he would be able to stand his ground fairly well against Mikasa. God, that could be bad. I can’t imagine either really backing down. I hope to god for Eren’s sake that things don’t end up like that.

For some reason, I feel like Romeo before he goes to the party. Something in the air is different this coming spring, and I’m not exactly getting good vibes from it.

Then again, I’m actually so full of shit, you can feel absolutely free to go ahead and ignore me.

 

* * *

 

I throw my guitar pick in a petty show of my frustration. I want this song to work out, I really do. But it’s just - it’s just being really hard to work with. For one thing, I don’t want the same chord progression used in every single song these days. Sure, I totally understand that it’s a cool sounding chord progression, very wholesome or whatever, but I don’t want to write just another song. That, though, is proving to be rather difficult to work my way around. Really, I just can’t find _anything_ I think sounds good to me.

After a few seconds of taking a few breaths to calm down, I decide to just play the notes with lead. It won’t be _too_ hard, I hope, and maybe I can work something in around that. I use an app on my phone to identify each pitch that I’m using when singing the song with the sound I developed in my head over the course of the day. I write it down and stare at it. Here goes nothing, I suppose.

There’s a lot of mistakes, there’s no denying it. But I can feel a weird sort of pull in my chest, and I don’t know exactly for sure where the pull is taking me but I can’t help but want to let go of whatever it is that is grounding me and let the chord in my chest or whatever it is pull me to where I’m going, to where I can feel all of this and so much more coming together around me.

“We’re the cutthroat civilisation, We’ve got time on our hands and more debt ‘cause of them. We’re the amputated needy nation, Selling our souls to fuel our minds / We’re the sophisticated rise of hate and / We were raised on rebellion with ammunition to spare / We’re the antichrist love of sake / And we’re all too broken to say that we’re taken.” I changed some of the lyrics in the chorus. I thought that the sophisticated rise of hate and sounded better than inflation, I don’t know. Other than that there were a few other changes in the chorus too, like saying broken instead of ready and saying selling our souls to fuel our minds.

I smile. This is actually turning out better than I thought it would, and not even that emo too. Now maybe I could get a sort of plucking pattern for the notes to make it sound better…? The verses are similar to the chorus but don’t have the same melody, so I need a different plucking pattern for those because making thing easy for myself is apparently not in Jean Kirschtein’s DNA. Ah, oh well. Homework is for losers anyway, it is a friday, and I mostly finished it in my learning lab too. I won’t let myself stress about it.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve been playing electric bass guitar, upright bass, acoustic guitar, and electric guitar for years upon years (Ukulele too but that doesn’t really contribute to the calluses). I can honestly say I have calluses for days, and a little bit of playing doesn’t hurt me none. So it really says something when I say I was playing, I was working on that song till my fingers hurt and even then I kept on going. My throat felt rough when I went up to get dinner from the kitchen (mom didn’t cook tonight). And what did I do when I came back downstairs to eat my dinner? I played more. I think the crazy thing a lot of people without it don’t understand is that assion isn’t just inspiring, it’s _addicting._ To put your passion into play is like to shoot up on the sweetest drug, and you never want to stop.

I never want to stop. At some point during the night I grab my phone, and open up the voice memos app. At first I’m just recording the little plucking patterns, the notes and all, but after I record a separate memo for both the verse, the chorus, and the little bridge I came up with upon improvisation, I decide maybe I’ll record a video of me paying it… and singing too. What could it hurt? It’s not like anyone is going to see it. Not even Connie, despite how much I know he would want to hear it.

My lighting is good, I know, so at least I can take credit for that. I make sure to record it without my face showing, so that only my mouth is visible to the camera and the rest is out of the frame. If someone discovered this on my phone while snooping, only someone who has heard me sing or knew what the brand of my acoustic guitar was would be able to tell if it was me. Even then, they might have to know my chin and lips really well to be able to tell they belong to me, and honestly there’s only one person who can attest to that and we’ve been broken up for years now. And yes, okay, I’m over it. Why else would I be giving her a ride every morning to school? A ride every afternoon home?

I’ve fallen in love. That’s no secret. Mikasa and I dated in our sophomore year of high school, and we were actually steady for a while. Then she broke up with me, because she discovered she was actually a lesbian and really confused when she was with me. I only completely got over the bitter feelings about three fourths of the way through our junior year of high school, and I kept having rebound hoes or hookups for a while after that. I think the last one was the beginning of this school year. I’ve moved on. Still, I can’t help but hope that maybe she still remembers what my lips look like. I can’t say I want her to taste them again, but I’m allowed to hope that my longest relationship left an impact on the other person too, right? Yeah. Yeah, I am.

I start the beginning notes with only the slightest bit of hesitation racing through my fingers, which is then washed away by the forming muscle memory claiming its rights and its confidence in my veins and in my pumping heart. I open my mouth and begin to sing. And I sing, and I play, and I go on and on and on and for some reason, I can’t shake the pride I have _for myself._ Is that weird? I really hope it isn’t. I finish the song with the feeling of galaxies rushing through my mind and claiming my soul for the stars, and I wonder if maybe I’m being a little bit too poetic about a song (one that is kind of way too mainstream and the other not produced very well at all if I’m going to be completely honest with myself)for the second day in a row.

Nah. Songs are poetry, right? What’s wrong with being a little poetic about a poem? A beautiful, perhaps over glorified poem, but still a poem nonetheless. I think if my life were a poem, it would be free verse with the off chance of a rhyming line here and then, for every time I cannot stop myself from following the rules of society and established by the old parental units. My old man and… is it not allowed to say my old woman?

The song ends with the final note echoing round, and I let it echo in my head for about five seconds before sighing, and pressing the button to end the video recording on my phone. Should I listen to it? I don’t know, I might start to and then cringe because my voice sounds way worse than I could have imagined. I mean, I know what my voice sounds like more or less because of other recording I’ve done of it every once in awhile, but I’ve been singing for a while and my voice is a little bit scratchy. What if it sounds really stupid with all the hard work I put into the plucking? That might destroy me a little bit, I’ll confess that right away.

I finally give up and press the play button. There’s the little background noise of buzzing that I’m sure will be covered up as soon as I start playing. I’m right, and I see my fingers hesitate a little on the first notes the way I noticed, but then it seems like I get the confidence I need and my fingers start moving like they were born to play guitar, if I do say so myself. And then, I start singing.

There’s a small catch that’s noticeable in my voice, but somehow it actually sounds like I did it on purpose. Still being modest and everything, I actually think it sounds… pretty cool. I feel myself smile slowly, shaking my head in disbelief. I created this. Shit. Heck. Hell. Fuck. The chorus starts, and my voice goes and sounds kind of like a mix of Arctic Monkeys, Finish Ticket, and … Green Day? Maybe. It’s actually pretty fucking cool to hear something that I wrote and something I played.I get to the second verse and for a moment I wonder if maybe I should send this to Connie and see how he reacts, before backtracking. Holy shit, Jean, calm down. There’s no need to go fucking mental. I don’t know if I’m ready for _anyone_ to hear this. Whether it’s something like Eren and wanting to hold what he and Levi have to himself for a few days before sharing or it’s just the always fun bit of uncertainty in my own skill, I am so not ready.

I get to the chorus for the second time in the recording, and I can’t help but feel that pride for myself again. That’s actually kind of cool. Fuck. I don’t know if maybe it sounds arrogant or not, but after working for hours on something and then playing till my fingers actually want to be buried six feet deep separately, to see it come together like that just feels… I don’t know, this unexplainable _soaring_ feeling in my chest just kind of takes over. Like I’m flying. Like I’m absolutely weightless.

It’s the same feeling I got when I was in sixth grade, the year when I moved from taking the cello (which was like a prerequisite for bass at my middle school) to taking the bass, and if felt good. The feeling of my fingers wanting to die every time that I practiced made me feel, a little sixth grader already starting to question the world, alive. It made a little squirt think maybe music is the way to go and math sucks. I felt, in the moment of first playing my new bass, that I was something. If that makes sense at all in the first place.

It probably doesn’t, but that’s okay. All that really matters is how much it made sense to me, and how much it makes sense now as I stare at my own hands play the guitar and listen to my own voice singing a bitter song about today’s generation and the shit hand we’ve been dealt. I listen to my own voice cracking noticeably over the higher notes, and for some reason I actually like it. I like it. Huh. How crazy is that? I think the last time I was this proud of myself was when I didn’t do the French listening homework and was just good enough at French and the listening to my classmates that I could talk along in the full French discussion without giving away the fact that I had not listened to the podcast the night before. That was a good moment. I was very smug, and I think the teacher had an inkling of suspicion, btu I got a one hundred percent on it anyway. Ha.

The bridge starts, and I let myself be happy that I managed to get the improvisation part right. Though it doesn’t technically count as improvisation anymore, it was never actually written down like the rest of the song was. I just kind of came up with it on the spot, liked it, and then kept singing it when working through with the song. It has the same notes more or less as the verse, so it all worked out. The bridge ends, and I listen as the chorus is played through one last time, some harmonies implemented to give the feel of this being the final time going through it, this is _it._ The recording ends with me very obviously running my hand through my hair after playing the last note, and smiling a tiny bit before it cuts out. I wonder how cool it would look in video if I got snake bite piercings. That’s off topic. It doesn’t matter. (Though honestly I can’t help but think that it would look really fucking cool if I got somehow convinced my parental units to let me get snake bites).

Connie texts me something about maybe coming over tomorrow to work on homework (meaning he wants to come over and mooch off of the unhealthy snacks in my pantry and play video games), and I say yeah, why not. It’s not like my mom or dad would be mad at it, they both love Connie to bits and they aren’t ever doing anything usually, so it’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. He says he’ll be over at around ten, which I think is way too early if either one of us values sleep, but I don’t bother telling him that. Even if I did, it’s not like he would care. I guess I can’ just mess around on my guitar or bass of ukulele the entire day tomorrow after all.

 

\-----

 

“Hey Jean, do you guys still have those Mexican cokes in your upstairs fridge?” Connie asks, and I sigh. I was expecting this. I mean, I have to give him credit for trying a little bit. He even brought over his backpack this time, which is potential. Wasted potential, because neither of us has even looked at it since he got over here and flopped it onto my floor, but it’s potential nonetheless. I can give him respect for that. A for effort, and all that bullshit.

“Yeah, we do. I gotta take a piss, I’ll just go use the bathroom upstairs and then grab you one on the way back down,” I tell him, getting up. I don’t really have to take a piss all that much, but whatever. The stupid things I’ll do for my stupid friends. All this hassle, all the effort that goes into getting up from where I was sitting and playing video games, and just for a Mexican coke for Connie. He’s lucky I’m his friend.

“Aw, Jeanbo, you’re a lifesaver. All the love and all that shit,” he calls after me as my feet pound down in a steady rhythm on the stairs leading to the upper floor (or I guess the middle floor) of my house. I look out the window and notice a bird on the metal table on our back patio. It’s a … oh god. Sasha would know. A blue jay? Maybe? I don’t know. It’s blue and it’s really pretty, I can tell that for sure. I think I’m getting a bit too distracted by a bird. I know that I shouldn’t be just randomly lingering by my window, watching a bird with my mouth agape and my eyes soft, but I can’t help it.

Though I’m certainly not complaining about it, I can’t help but wonder what is keeping Connie from straight up shouting through the floor to hurry up. He has before, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he did. So why isn’t he? Maybe he’s that into the pause screen of a multiplayer video game? I really don’t think so. Still, what else could he be doing? Maybe just playing candy crush on his phone, if I’m being honest. That would actually probably make sense knowing Connie, which I do know Connie.

After grabbing a bag of chips I go into my fridge to see if I was being truthful about my promise that we still have come Mexican cokes. My mom maybe hasn’t gone to the store recently and gotten more, or my dad might have drunk the last one the night before. I search for a moment, and see that there’s two left. Do I want one? Eh… why not. I grab one for myself and one for Connie, and I wonder eraly what is stopping Connie from yelling up the through the floor for me to hurry up. I’ve been up here for a minute, maybe two, maybe three by now. How has he not lost his patience and just straight up yelled at me to hurry up? Maybe Connie learned how to be patient?

Nah, that doesn’t sound like the Connie I know and love. When has he ever known to keep his big fat mouth shut? When has he ever known that it’s time for him to stop? When has he ever had the situational awareness to not yell up at me through the floor? About zero times, really. There has to be another explanation for this, I can’t just believe Connie beign - Connie being-

Oh god. I left my phone down with him. Shit. Shit. _Shit._ I think I may have just made a huge mistake? I think I might have just ruined myself forever. The thing about my phone, is that as I mentioned earlier, Connie and Sasha and I all have our fingerprints in each other’s phones. Why not, right? We don’t really have anything to hide from each together, all our secrets are things that we already have shared with each other or we made with each other, so it’s really no big deal for them to have complete access to my phone and for me to have access to get into their phones as well. No big deal.

Unless, of course, you happened to record a video of you playing guitar and singing an original song. Then that might be a cause for alarm. Especially if you, you know, never learned to develop the habit of completely closing your tabs in your phone. Especially if you, perhaps, left your phone still on the camera app so that the first thing that would show up if you unlocked your phone is the aforementioned recording facing right up at you. Then it might be a little bit of a problem. _Just a lil’ bit._

I walk down the stairs to see my phone where I left it. Oh good. Thank the lord up in heaven (which I don’t really believe in but we can think about that later). Everything is fine -

“Hey Elvis,” Connie greets me, and my stomach drops to my feet. “I liked your song.”


	2. I Guess I Could Start A War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean does a thing and after Connie hounds him about the thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title of the chapter is from declan mckenna's 'the kids don't wanna come home.' give it a listen, it good.

There are a grand multitude of things I could do. I could nervously shake me head and ask Connie if he’s being serious - did he really like my song? I could very easily tell him thanks, and just move on past that and never talk about the song again. I could say that I liked it too, and he was nothing special. I could even probably say something along the lines of his mom and it would be fine by Connie to leave the topic alone. 

Instead I decide I want to say, “Oh my fucking god shut up.”

“What?!” Connie protests, nearly fucking dropping the controller in his hands. “It was good! I liked it! You should upload it to YouTube or something, and be one of those YouTubers that uploads singing videos and like instrument videos and all the stuff like that.” I raise my eyebrow at him, and he nods again, as if I didn’t get it the first time. “Really fucking good, Jean,” he reassures me.

“You’re wrong,” I halfway singsong, halfway demented chant. He raises an eyebrow a me, and hey that’s  _ my  _ signature move, but I ignore it anyway. He can believe what he wants to believe I guess. I sit down on the chair I had been in, and there’s this blessed, single moment of peaceful quiet. Maybe I should have taken that as the sign that I was absolutely fucked. Then, everything goes to shit.

Connie jumps on me with a sort of battle cry, and I let out what I wish was a manly yell but probably ended up being something more along the lines of a girly shriek. “Jeanbo!” He exclaims, and I want to die a little bit more than usual. “Stop doubting yourself!” His shoulder is actually in my mouth. Actually blocking off my breathing. Whatever. Go ahead and  _ kill your friend,  _ Connie. It’ll be fun. Go for it. I pound my fist on his back a few times before he gets the message, and puts some distance between us. 

Of course, he completely ignores the fact that I was struggling to breathe, or the thing where I’m coughing right in front of it. Wowie. What a good friend, am I right?

 

\-----

 

“When I grow up, I’m going to be a doctor,” Connie’s little sister, Rayne, tells me. I had just been walking Connie home because we were talking about something and I wanted to get the last word, but i ended up sitting at his kitchen island while he made me a grilled cheese sandwich. Reyne had come into the kitchen and demanded one too, so we got into a conversation. 

First she had made sure to explain to me exactly what had just happened in the last episode of this show she’s watching (it’s called valtrain or voltron or something like that). She’s ten years old and already just as much of a cray fangirl as Sasha can get. She would not shut up about this gay ship she has between the red guy and the blue guy - that’s what she called them. I was just glad that I wasn’t the actor for a show or anything like that, because who knew who I would be shipped with. Even though I’m straight, I would probably be shipped with so many guys, and as the bottom or something. Not exactly what I want. 

After that she started asking me all about my life - what the heck even was highschool like? She’s in like fifth grade or something, and I think I caught a little bit of anxiety in her voice. She’s going to be going into middle school soon, so I guess she’s wondering how accurate the High School Musical movies are and if she’ll be bullied or something. No, I almost wanted to tell her out of nowhere, people don’t actually stand on the lunch tables and sing perfectly coordinated musical numbers, at least not unless the school musical is trying to promote itself and convince students to go. 

I tried to tell her that high school is really just another grade after another grade after another grade after another grade. That there is really nothing special about it, it’s just learning stuff that was slightly too hard the year before, and then graduating with a piece of paper and a hat and robe. She didn’t like that very much, and neither did Connie. He halfheartedly glared at me, and told Reyne that I was just being stingy, high school was way more fun than I was making it out to be. I snorted.

“High school,” connie had started to say, whilst flipping a grilled cheese sandwich on the pan, “is an adventure. You meet all sorts of new people, and a lot of times it is where people finally feel ready to express themselves. There’s clubs and sports and cheerleaders in short skirts…” he trailed off, raising his eyebrows at his younger sister like he was suggesting something. 

“Connie!” She had exclaimed, sounding a little bit shocked and a little like she was joking. “You know I would never look at another girl! I have a girlfriend!” I smiled at Reyne. At a young age she had realised her sexuality, and it had never been a big deal in her family. Her parents were perfectly fine with her and her little “girlfriends” and “boyfriends” (because what form of dating is actually real in fifth grade?), and I was always really happy for her when I was reminded of that. This little girl though, I thought, is getting it on with far more girls than I am. Not like actually getting it on, but still. How is that fair?

“What do you want to do when you grow up, Reyne?” I asked her, which is what lead to her telling me she wants to be a doctor. I laugh a little bitterly, hoping she doesn’t notice that it sounds like I’m making fun of her. I’m really not, but like, who doesn’t want to be a doctor when they’re a kid? Who’s to say I’m not a kid?

Then again, I don’t know if I ever wanted to be a doctor when I was growing up. May parents had hopes that I would, surely, but I don’t know if I myself ever genuinely wanted to be a doctor myself. I think the closest I ever got was in fourth grade when I said that, mark my words, I was going to grow up and be a vet and befriend  _ so  _ many animals. I think that particular dream maybe lasted a week?

I remember there was about a two year time span where I wanted to be everything and anything that I could possibly be. A spy, or maybe a police officer. A pilot, or a stay at home dad. A veterinarian, or a mechanic, or a lumberjack, or an FBI agent. Maybe I wanted to grow up and become an accountant, or a graphic designer, or a musician, or an artist in the oil paints of my eyes. And then, around the beginning of middle school, all of that just tumbled downhill.

What was the point of life? I remember thinking that to myself as I laid at the bottom of the sky,  staring up at the stars with all my sixth grade friends clustered around me in the dark as we stargazed. What was the point, if all moments weren’t going to be like this? Like I’m living amongst a world of zombies, who make movies and write music and save lives while I stare at the sky and feel more alive than all of them combined?

I look over at Reyne, who wants to be a doctor when she grows up. I hope she does that. I hope she becomes the best damned doctor out there, and marries whoever she wants to if that’s what she wants. I hope she lives life like it’s only one moment, but also like life is an entire eternity. Because it is. It is a moment in the eternity, and you’ll find out which one matters when you die and your life flashes before your eyes. 

“That’s cool. Are you ready for all the years of school that come with it, though?” I ask her. She nods, her face set in a very serious sort of way. Calm down there, Reyne. This isn’t life or death. Just life. Just a life involving a lot of schooling, if you’re actually serious about this and not just swept up in some ten year old frenzy to make money and live in a big house when you’re older. 

“I can do all the school! I already talked about this with my teacher, and she said that there’s, like, eight years of school or something. But I can do it!’ Her face and the tone in her voice almost seems like she’s trying to goad me into challenging her, just to prove that she is more up to the test than I could have ever imagined. I hold my hands up in a sort of ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ gesture. 

“Okay, okay kid. I believe you. Kudos to you, I guess, for being so determined,” I say to her, hoping she’ll stop borderline verbally attacking me. God, Connie’s family is intense. His mom is a firefighter, his dad is a mechanic, and his stepmom is a nurse in the ER at the hospital in the city. All of them do their careers with so much passion, with so much zeal to live and to live successfully that it attracts people to them like moths to a flame. Connie is intense too, but he has no real idea of what he wants to do, so I guess right there he’s the exception. It’s actually one of his few insecurities, that he admitted to me in the dark one night in Junior year. All of his family seems so sure, he told me. But he has no fucking clue what he’s doing. 

I guess we can bond over the feel of being a failure to our family. Of course, I’m certain that Connie is going to figure it out sooner than later, and go into the top ten of his career in the world or something, because if he wants to spend the rest of his life doing something he’s going to love it enough to do it enough to be so fucking good at it. That’s one of the secrets of life, I think, that some people never realise. How do you get good at something? By doing it a lot. Why would you do it a lot? Because you love it. Therefore, if you love doing something that much, then it becomes way easier to get good at it right off the bat. 

What do I love? I don’t know. Music, I guess. But I’m not exactly a pro, am I? That’s okay, I’ve already come to terms with the fact that midway through senior year I’m probably going to apply for a lot of colleges to get a teaching degree in French or something like that. The only thing I actually am good at after all, is French. And though I don’t want to spend the rest of my life teaching at some public school for a bunch of snotty little brats, I’m not exactly musician material here. Eh, it’s okay. 

“Hey Jean,” Reyne asks, seeming to be pleased with m no longer questioning her and how determined she is to e a doctor anymore, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I laugh a little at her, reaching over and ruffling up her hair. I know she doesn’t like it when I do that, but what else am I supposed to do? I’m practically her older brother, I get rights to ruffle up her hair in exchange for all the times that I have braided it and put ribbons in it for her. 

“Well squirt, I practically already am grown up,” I tell her, and she frowns, flattening down her hair. It’s always a little bit of a shock when I see old pictures of Connie, because he used to have hair exactly the same mousy brown as hers right now. And it was long, like down to his shoulders long. Sure, I’ve known him that long so I can remember it, but I’m so used to him being bald that remembering the way it was is off setting. 

“You know what I mean, Jean!” She complains to me. “What job do you want to have, if you could have any job? What do you want to be, most of all in the whole entire world? Connie comes over to the Island bearing three grilled cheese sandwiches, and starts eating on while looking at me as if waiting for the answer to his little sister’s question. Reyne takes a big bite too, almost like she’s copying her older brother. 

“What do I want to be, most of all in the whole entire world?” I muse, and Reyne nods at me, impatient with getting my answer. I look up at the ceiling of Connie’s house, biting my lip a little bit. I could tell her I wanted to be a musician, but with Connie right there, he would definitely bring up the song he listened to against my will and I don’t want that. Not right now, at least. 

“Well, I guess if I had to answer that…” I trail off then turn back to looking at Reyne. What should I say? Do I really want anything? “What I want to be most in the entire world, my dearest little Reyne, is… ” I tease her putting my answer off further and further like I’m testing her patience. Which, I suppose that  _ is  _ technically what I’m doing. What can I say? It’s amusing. I think maybe there’s even a little bit of truth hiding itself away in my answer when I finally do answer her impatient gaze with a shrug and four more words. 

“Absolutely nothing at all.”

 

\-----

 

Monday morning comes like a hammer down on my skull, hard and rude and just a bit crude - not to mention completely uninvited. I have the fun ordeal of getting up at 6 in the morning every single goddamned school day, so I go from sleeping in to  _ 6 in the morning.  _ If that isn’t straight up hell, then I honestly don’t know what is. Then again, I could have a job and have to get up at like 6 every day, so it’s not that bad. Still bad, of course, but not nearly as bad as it could become. 

I look over at my turntable while I’m getting up. I’ve been wanting to get another Beatles vinyl, so maybe that’s what I’ll do after school today. There’s this shop a little ways from my house called the record exchange, where you basically can buy all sorts of vinyl or sell your own vinyl or turntables or whatever to the store. Or just donate. My parents donated them all of the old cassette tapes they had of the bands they liked when they were young, because they don’t like them anymore. That was how I got introduced to the store. 

Pulling on grey skinny jeans, black converse high tops, and a Ramones shirt, I decide I’m decent enough for school. Sure, my parents might not be all that happy with my fashion choices (more the grey skinny jeans than anything really, because in their own words “only gay guys wear skinny jeans”), but if I only did things to please my parents then I would be a very unhappy Jean. I mean, I already am a pretty unhappy Jean, but I’d be even sadder than I am on a regular basis, and that’s saying something. 

Okay, okay. Maybe I should stay away from falling down that particular rabbit hole, because my middle school depression coming over to say hi every few hours is not a topic I exactly  _ want  _ to think or talk about. 

When I walk out the door, I have the feeling of just brushed teeth in my mouth and the vague sense that something is a little bit… off. I go to my car, shaking off the feeling, and right before I’m about to drive away to go pick up Mikasa and Eren, Connie raps on the passenger side window. I roll my eyes, but let him in anyway. “Hey man,” he greets me, and I say hi back to him. 

As we’re driving to pick up Eren and Mikasa and then go to school I get the weirdest sense of deja vu when Connie looks over at me after staring out of the passenger side window for a few minutes. “Do you ever get  _ deja vu _ ?” I ask him. He raises his eyebrow at me, and stretches his arms out behind him.  _ Deja vu _ is kind of the odd feeling that you’re in a situation that you have already experienced, or that you have been in this exact same place and this exact same location and situation before. Maybe you get it when you see you’re friend at the lockers in the morning, or when you go throughout the day. Sometimes I dream about days long before they happen, down to the smallest detail, and the entire day I go through  _ deja vu _ . It has french origins, so maybe that’s why I experience it so much. It literally translates to “already seen.”

“Do you ever experience  _ vuja de _ ?” Connie asks me with a sort of shit eating grin climbing up on his face. I feel like I know where this is going one way or another. I take a deep breath, knowing that things might be taking a not so good turn not so far from the present. Then, I spare a glance at him before turning back to the road, making sure to keep my eyebrows raised at him (and no I’m not mocking him for raising his eyebrows at me what are you talking about leave me alone). 

“And, my dearest Connie, do tell me what  _ vuja de _ is?” I prompt him.

“Oh, it is the feeling that you’ve never been in this particular place or this particular situation before,” he replies, and I snort, hitting him lightly on the arm. 

“You little shit. You think you’re so funny.” I tell him, my words kinda harsh but my tone totally betraying me and showing him all my stupid underlying affection I have for him as a friend. 

“Excuse you, I  _ am  _ so funny.” He responds to me by rolling his eyes - which I just barely catch him doing in the second I glance away from the road again to laugh at him. 

“Sure.” He snorts at me, an unattractive noise that comes out his nostrils and graces the air between us. “That was hot,” I comment, making him genuinely snort again, and start laughing. 

“You’re just jealous,” he says to me, sounding like he’s teasing me. What a fucking idiot. I love him, yeah, but that doesn’t make him any less of a fucking idiot. 

“Fuck you, Connie,” I reply, not actually serious or sounding serious at all. He waggles his eyebrows at me suggestively, and makes a sort of impression of Flynn Rider’s ‘the smolder’ face. I almost choke on my breath at that face being made at me, and want to die a little bit. 

“Ooooh, Jean,” he trills, sounding way too suggestive. “I didn’t know you  _ felt that way  _ about me. When and where, my darling, when and where?” I smack him again on the arm, shaking my head at him because oh my god that fucking idiot. He needs to get help or… I don’t know, something. Not really. But honestly, Connie, really?

“Oh my god, shut up,” I tell him. “You have a girlfriend, and I’m straight. Did you get in an argument with Sasha and want me to help out with your blue balls? Sorry man. Doesn’t matter how deep our friendship goes, I’m not sucking your dick, or lettign it get anywhere near my asshole.”

“But,” he says, completely ignoring all the things I literally just said to him about being straight, completely ignoring the fact that  _ he knows I like vagina,  _ “You’re admitting you’re a bottom? Oho ho ho, Jean, how lewd. I’m innocent. I never asked for this. Is it possible for someone to take your virginity just by talking about sex in front of you too explicitly? Oh my god, Jean, you got me pregnant! Will you pay the child support?!” He finishes off his little rant with a dramatically raised voice.  

“Actually shut up,” I tell him, rolling my eyes. “I’m straight, you’re not a fucking virgin, but you are an idiot. An idiot with a girlfriend, for that matter. And even if you could get pregnant, you can bet I sure as hell would not pay the goddamn child support.” I finish with a cold sounding voice. He frowns, and gently puts a hand on my arm, conveniently forgetting all about what I just said about guys not being able to get pregnant, me being straight, and him having a girlfriend.

“But Jean,” he whispers over - dramatically. “That’s  _ our child.”  _ I sigh, and after a few seconds roll my eyes for what feels like maybe the millionth time this morning. 

“Fine,” I say, pulling into Eren and Mikasa’s driveway. They quickly pile out of their house and into my car, Eren frowning at Connie in the passenger seat. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks Connie. “I usually take the shotgun seat, you ass.” His words aren’t serious, of course, and Connie decides that now is the time to gloat as I pull away from Eren and Mikasa’s house and start the drive towards our collective high school. 

“Excuse you,  _ I’m  _ Jean’s main ho, you can back off. You’re just a side ho. I get priority, obviously.” He pretends to flip his non existent hair over his shoulder with a little smirk. Eren scoffs at that, very theatrically. I would remind Connie that he has a girlfriend again, but honestly she might just be proud of him. 

“Connie,” I say instead. “You know that I could still kick you out right now if I wanted to. I don’t have to drive you,” I remind him. He doesn’t fucking care. 

“But Jean!” he fake gasps. “Our child!” Eren pauses for a moment.

“Do I even want to know-”

“Nope,” I cut him off. 

 

\-----

 

“Hey Jean, you know what you should do?” Connie says to me as we’re getting out of my car at the school. Eren and Mikasa already walked off to the place our friend group meets in the morning, but I guess I’m perpetually slower than them. It’s not like it irks me or anything, I really don’t care. I mean, we’re all getting there eventually, and I happen to enjoy my me time.

“What?” I ask him, slinging my probably five thousand pound backpack onto my back and nearly slumping over in defeat. School has me at the near breaking point, I swear, and it’s not even halfway through the year. I’m actually just this pathetic, it isn’t even funny anymore. I’m at the point of maybe admitting defeat to my  _ backpack.  _ A fucking inanimate object has beaten me. Fuck my life. 

“Do something with the song you wrote, like upload it to Youtube or something like that. You know, you’ve got real talent there,” he tells me nonchalantly, as if his words aren’t destroying me because complimenting me on the thing I’m insecure about almost makes me… embarrassed? I want him to shut up, at least I know that for certain. Someone should be proud of me for being certain about  _ something.  _

“I thought we were done talking about this,” I reply, just as nonchalant sounding but actually screaming on the inside. Kill me. Jesus. Anyone. I’ll take what I can get at this point, if I’m gonna be honest. He walks alongside me casually, shaking his head with a sly little grin at what I said about how I thought we were finally finished talking about the whole song thing. I thought that the confrontation in my basement and the way I dealt with it was a clue enough for him to know it’s not happening. 

“Well, obviously you thought wrong,” he replies, nudging me a little bit with his shoulder. I sigh a little bit, and he laughs. “Come on! Jean you’re actually really good, and your songwriting skills are way superior to mine.” I try to maybe turn the conversation onto another route so that we don’t have to talk about the whole song thing anymore.

“That’s because all your songs were absolute shit,” I tell him, like the nice and loving and supportive friend that I am. I mean, how much more loving and kind could I get? “Your emo phase man. I don’t even know. It was a shitshow if I’m gonna try and put it  _ nicely.”  _ He laughs a little bark like thing at me when I say that, nodding his head in agreement. 

“Yeah,” he says in reply to me, “It really was. Remember the time when I wanted to have hair again so that I could have the feathery bangs and the long emo hair?” I snort at him, and feel proud of myself. I have successfully diverted the conversation away from any mentions of my song by the time we reach the place where our friends hang out in the morning, and I start up a conversation with Ymir so that there’s less of a chance of Connie randomly springing the conversation topic on me again. 

To get one thing straight, it isn’t like I don’t enjoy the fact that Connie seems to like my song as much as I do, because that’s actually encouraging. It just makes me feel… weird to have him talking about it, mentioning it. It makes me this weird sort of embarrassed, not that I’m embarrassed or myself or him but… I don’t know. It makes me feel weird. Maybe a bit insecure. I’m not quite sure. Overall, it just makes me feel pretty uncomfortable, okay? Yeah. 

“Hey Jeeaaaaan!” Sasha trills, and jumps on my back, laughing a little bit. I grunt out a little bit, damn Sash you could give me a bit of a warning. “Connie told me about what you did!” she exclaims, moving to face me, and I think I can feel my stomach drop all the way to my feet. He didn’t. What the hell. Not cool, Connie, not cool at all- “I can’t believe you told Reyne that you don’t want to be anything when you’re older,” she chides me, and I blink in confusion.

What? I thought she was talking about… I thought the thing that Connie had told her about was… the whole song thing. I look at him standing behind Sasha, and I think he knows exactly my thought process. Oops. Sorry for doubting you, Con man. “I…” Sasha is looking at me expectantly with her hands on her hips, her scolding a little bit more teasing than anything else. “I’m sorry?” I say.

“Are you  _ asking  _ me, horse man?” She asks, the sass all too real but the teasing obvious, so it’s not like I can take it genuinely in a rude way.

“I think this is bullying,” I respond to her, mirroring her in an only somewhat mocking way with my hands on my hips. She catches on, and scoffs at me. In a totally stupid and obviously comical way, of course. “You’re being mean to me, Sasha. Connie, pick my side this one time,” I plead with fake desperation in my voice, and Connie tries not to smile. 

“Sorry, bro, but I gotta side with Sash on this. She’s my girlfriend, I just gotta,” he says. I look him dead in the eyes.

“You suck.” He nods, and before he can do that stupid comeback I beat him to it. “And I do not swallow, so you can go sit on a dick, yeah?” He places a hand over his heart, looking mock offended. 

“Jean! How lewd! I can’t believe you would say something like that about me! I will have you know, I am such a virgin, I would never even think of having the … the sex! Ugh, I can’t even say it without being disgusted! I would never have sex!” Sasha raises her eyebrow at him, and I’m grateful that the attention of the conversation has moved from being on me to him. 

“Would you now?” She questions, and I think the thing that really sets the warning bells off inside of Connie’s head is how serious she sounds. He backtracks even faster than I do when I accidentally mention the idea of being a musician for a career choice in front of my parents of my grandmother or something along those general lines. To put it simply, hella fast. 

“Well - um - when I said that I didn’t  _ mean  _ it of course and - well - I would definitely have sex! Especially if I had an incredibly ind and smart and hot girlfriend who wanted to maybe have sex wth me, that would be fine too!” I laugh at him, and Sasha only waits a second before joining in. He’s distracted from the whole music thing, all is right in the world. Before Sasha can really respond, the bell rings and Connie and I start bolting towards the English room.

People are looking at us weirdly again, and honestly I want them to try and be late, even if it’s just by a little bit, to my teacher’s class, and then they can judge me for running my ass off to just get to there on time, yeah? Maybe it’s because I’m running alongside Connie, though. He’s kind of weird, and has a sort of reputation of being weird, so perhaps I’m being judged because of Con man. 

Eh, probably not actually. I think people are really just bitches who judge, but that’s okay. Because I’m a bitch who judges, so it’s nothing all that personal anyway. Just people being people, people judging other people for being people, people being judged for judging people just being people… it goes around.

\-----

 

Tuesday, and I have to drink another cup of coffee before I feel actually alive in the morning. Connie doesn’t ask for a ride today, so I just go and pick up Eren and Mikasa as usual. Eren still hasn’t explained to me what’s going on with Levi, and I guess he’ll do it in his own time and all that shit, but I can’t help but be curious. How did he manage to catch the boy he’s been thirsting over for so long, especially when (and I’m not being rude here, just honest) Levi is so out of Eren’s league?

I mean, I was there when Eren first saw Levi ever. It was in Math class, obviously, but not in Senior year. It was all the way back in our Sophomore year on a friday, which okay yes isn’t all  _ that _ far back, btu it feel that far back. Anyway, we were struggling on something, and pretty much everyone in the Math class was struggling with the problem but some smarty pants freshmen who were in this class because they were so fuckign smart or they had skipped a year of math back in middle school. 

Levi, of course, went to this private all boys school nearby. What we didn’t know (because we didn’t know he existed) was that his school had a half day of school on that friday. We had a full day of school though, and about halfway through our Math class Levi just walks into the room. I saw him before Eren did, and took a complete double take after only glancing up for a second.

There was this boy, with those stormy looking eyes that everyone melts over, and this dark black hair. He had an angled face and a sort of haughty look, like he knew he was better than everyone else and relished in it. He was hot, I would admit it. But the reason I did the double take was because he was short, actually. Like, shorter than Eren and I. By about 40 centimeters or something crazy like that. I found it a little bit comical, that a guy so intimidating and hot was  _ that  _ short, so I nudged Eren. “Look,” I whispered. 

And I swear, a movie moment happened. Eren looked up at me first, with a bit of irritation in his eyes (probably because of how frustrated the math was making him because he’s an idiot ha), and then looked up at Levi. His eyes, they might have actually sparkled. They widened, and his mouth gaped open as he just straight out stared at Levi like he actually wanted to devour him. Lil’ bit gross if I’m being honest. 

“Oh my god,” he breathed out, and I had to poke him lightly in the ribs so that he would stop staring at that kid who’s name I didn’t know yet. He looked over at me with even more irritation in his eyes, except this time it was caused by a hot guy. I raised an eyebrow at him, and then pointed to his math homework with my index finger. He was going to get slapped if he just stared at that kid like that.

“Ah, hello Levi,” our math teacher at the time said. I could almost see Eren’s ears perking up, and the small thought forming in his along the lines of ‘ _ Levi, huh _ ?’ What a creep. “Did you have a half day at school today?’ She asked. He must have nodded or something, because he didn’t verbally reply to that question and she acted like she got a response. 

“My dad said his class didn’t need any help, but that you asked for me to come by and help if I was here anytime, so here I am,” he told her. I think Eren died a little inside, because I could see a twinge of it on the outside. I had to admit, I could understand on some level why Eren was already thirsting over this boy, he was hot, and had a nice voice. Kinda short, but I guessed Eren didn’t care about that. 

Honestly, in my opinion, Levi was already striking me as kind of an over confident dickbag. I almost wanted to grab him a full length mirror to show him that he was stupidly short (not  _ that  _ short, but yeah, short) and he had no room to be so cocky. I suppose you could say I didn’t really like him. Not to mention he seemed vastly arrogant about how smart he was that he was lowering himself to help some Sophomores with their math. Well fuck you too, Levi. 

“Oh Levi, that’s so kind of you to come down here! I think if you could start out by helping, um,” she lowered her voice a little bit as if she didn’t want the class to hear who she thought needed the most help, “Eren, over there. He has brown hair and these blue or green eyes. He hasn’t been doing too well with this section.” Even though she seemed to have meant to make it so that everyone in the class didn’t hear that she thought Eren was struggling the most, it was obvious that  _ everyone  _ heard. Eren’s ears were turning red and he looked rather uncomfortable with how some students were looking back at him with some mean looks on their faces. I kinda wanted to tell them to fuck off, I mean they were struggling too. 

Sure, Eren can be really annoying sometimes, but I always have been pretty protective of my friends, I guess. I don’t like it when people try and mess with them. Even teachers, which is why I was kind of mad at my math teacher for doing that to Eren. I don’t recall liking her very much anyways, though, so maybe that contributed to the amount of unhappiness I had at her. 

Levi just fuckign  _ shrugged  _ in reply, like he actually shrugged at the teacher, before lazily walking over to Eren with confidence in his gait. Eren was sitting on my right, and Levi pulled up a chair in between us. “He, you’re Eren right?” he asked Eren in a voice that was way lower than the teacher’s. Well, at least he had more tact than she did anyway. Only about two other people heard him than Eren and I because he was considerate of Eren’s pride, so he wasn’t as bad as I had initially thought. 

“Y-yeah, that’s me,” he replied, and because Levi was facing Eren he didn’t see me teasingly roll my eyes at Eren behind Levi’s back. Eren saw me though, and that was what mattered. The blush on his ears spread a little bit to his cheeks, and he looked even more irritated at me. What’s new, though, am I right? He tried his best to ignore me, turning his gaze back to just look at Levi. I smirked at him, and I knew he saw that too because the blush spread even more. I was feeling sufficiently smug. 

“Ok, what are you having a hard time with?” Levi asked him, and I have to say Levi is actually a pretty good teacher. Throughout the rest of the period he helped Eren (and me, because I was low key listening to what he was saying to Eren the whole way through the class as a way to improve with what we were learning and also obtain blackmail information on Eren), and the idiot actually seemed to get it by the end of the class period. At one point Levi actually complimented Eren on how well he was doing now after all their work together, and Eren might have just outright  _ swooned.  _ It was hilarious. 

The interesting thing was that Levi actually didn’t have to stay with Eren the whole time he was there. He could have easily said that he was going to move on and help someone else, and the teacher herself even told him he could go help out Mina whenever he was finished helping Eren. Levi just shrugged her off though, and stayed with Eren the whole rest of the hour. I was always curious about why he did that, and why he continued to do that every time throughout the years that he’s come into classes to help out and has been assigned to help Eren. I suppose now I know why. 

I want Eren to tell me about how the actual moment or moments of them confessing to each other went, what really happened and why eh won’t tell me, but I’m gonna give him his space. He just had better tell me soon, because I’m giving him rides to school and he depends on me. If I don’t get that story (don’t judge me okay, I’m a gossip, and who isn’t anyway?) I might have to be drastic. Not that I would stop giving him rides to school, but I could threaten to… 

 

\-----

 

Wednesday, and Connie is at my car when I walk out of my house door. “Hey Jean!” He calls. I raise my eyebrow at him, but I don’t tell him he can’t use me as a ride to school. I can understand not wanting to take the bus. I mean, it’s gross and full of people that I hate and probably hate me too. And middle schoolers, because the middle school in our district starts at a close time that the high school does, so the middle schoolers and high schoolers ride the busses together. In a word, ew. 

“Connie, maybe you should start paying me gas money,” I joke to him while on the way to Eren and Mikasa’s house. “I mean, you hitch a ride with me enough that I’m losing gas because of your sorry ass.” He snorts and then he gets a really serious expression on his face. Really serious, but also with a faint glimmer of mischief in his eyes. Oh fuck me. 

“You know,” he comments almost outright flippantly with this lilt to his voice that has always keyed me in that he’s about to try and convince me to do something, “you wouldn’t have to worry about money if you became a famous YouTuber and just took a chance and put that song on YouTube and made a whole bunch of money.” I almost crash the car, and quickly pullout of the tight spot but glare at Connie. 

“Oh my god, I thought we had already talked about this,” I say to him. He raises an eyebrow at me, and that’s my move! Not his. He needs to stop stealing my moves, because I don’t care if he  _ is  _ one of my very best friends. Mine. Not his. He crosses hi arms over his chest, which I only see out of the corner of my eye because I pay attention to the road, like a good river. Cough cough, Sasha. 

“Actually, no, we haven’t talked about it,” he says back to me, and I fight the urge to roll my eyes at him. Yes we have, you big idiot. “ _ You  _ have talked about it, sort of,” he tells me. “Actually no. The only thing you’ve done is shut the idea down. But honestly, Jean, you should really consider it. I’m not just fucking with you when I say that you’re really good. Like, really fucking good.”

“Okay, I know that you have this idea in your head that I’m really good at music, but honestly I’m pretty mediocre. And the song I wrote might as well be straight up bullshit, it’s so stupid. Like, how seventh grade emo can I get, right?” I laugh hollowly at it. I don’t even understand why Connie keeps pestering me to upload it to YouTube. I’m really being honest when I say I’m not that good. For good measure I add, “I deleted the video of the song anyway, so there’s nothing to upload.”

Now that’s a lie. I haven’t deleted the video and Connie probably knows that just as well as I do. Still, it’s something to say, a way to make me maybe win the conversation and establish that this conversation topic is pretty off limits. “Oh please,” Connie replies, rolling his eyes at me. “Like I would believe that. C’mon, I know your passcode, and unless you deleted it last night, which I don’t think you did, then you still have it. I’m not  _ that  _ stupid, Jean,” he says. 

“You sure?” I ask, just for the sake of being a mean friend. Then I take a deep breath after he gives me a meaningful look. “Okay, okay. I’ll … moderately think about it. I’m not saying I’ll consider it!” I say when his face brightens. “Just that I’ll think about it. Does that make you happy?” He nods, a victorious little smirk on his face. “Damn you,” I mutter under my breath, and his smirk gets wider. 

When I pull up to Mikasa and Eren’s house, Connie is still smirking, and all I have to do is shake my head for Eren to nod and not ask about it. 

\-----

 

It’s Thursday, and I’m in Math with Connie. So far this is a record, I think, of him not having pestered me about the song and all those silly ideals of becoming a famous YouTuber. I’ve been checking my phone every few hours or so, expecting a text or something. For some reason I feel like he wouldn’t just forget about it because I said I’d think about it. I’m also hoping that somewhere in my notifications I get something about a new video from ‘Bodtoms Up,’ because Marco is an incredible YouTuber. 

Okay, so I’m a little bit of a sad fanboy. Whatever. I’m allowed to appreciate talent, right? It doesn’t have to mean anything. Not if I don’t want it to. And it doesn’t, so there we go. Just like how I don’t really want that song to mean anything. I mean, it does obviously, and I don’t want to take away from that or anything, I just don’t want to … make a big deal out of it. 

“Hey, Mr. Smith?” Eren tentatively asks. I raise one of my eyebrows. We were just working together on our worksheets that were given as homework, because today is a work day in class. What I want to know is why out of nowhere Eren has a question. I mean, not that he isn’t allowed to, it’s just a little bit out of character for him is all. What a weirdo. 

“Yes, Eren?” Mr. Smith asks. He seems to have almost the same attitude towards Eren raising his hand and asking something as I do, because I see one of his eyebrows (damn those eyebrows though) twitch as though he wants to raise it but has more tact than I do. Or self control. Either one of those is accurate, really. Maybe I should work on that… 

“I was just wondering,” he starts, and then pauses as if rethinking this whole thing. Unfortunately for him, I think there’s no way out of just asking what he was going to ask, no matter how self aware he’s become in the last two seconds. There’s this glint in Mr. Smith’s eye that I don’t trust to be merciful, not really. “... if your son is going to come into class today and… help us?” Eren’s voice has become more and more faint with every word vaulting off his tongue,and now he looks like he really regrets asking that in front of everyone now that half the class is looking at him all weird. 

“Help you, you mean?” I swear I almost hear Mr. Smith mutter under his breath. I think Eren hears it too, and his eyes bulge out a little bit and he bites his lip too. Then, in a more clear voice, Mr. Smith states, “You don’t really need to ask me, right? Just text him yourself, Mr. Jaeger.” Eren blushes a little bit and I think I can see a few people mouthing ‘he has Levi’s number?’ to each other. 

“Well - you see - I -” Eren stutters out a little bit before trying over again. Honestly him fucking up could be put in theatres and I would go see it because of how entertaining I find it. “I just can’t remember if he said that he has a half day today or not, and you know he can’t be on his phone in the middle of class and -” Mr. Smith interrupts him. 

“He could be on his phone, he just chooses not to be because he knows that it won’t help his learning. Maybe you should learn from him in that respect.” I hear some kids whisper that Mr. Smith straight up just burned Eren and I almost outright laugh. Eren’s ears turn even more red. “No, Eren, he doesn’t have a half day today. That’s next Thursday,” Mr. Smith finally tells Eren. 

Eren turns his face back to his paper, blushing from his very roots. While the rest of the class is distracted by Eren and Mr. Smith, a small slip of white paper covered by a sketch flutters almost gracefully onto my desk. I turn my gaze from where I’m snickering at how Eren manages to embarrass himself in almost every single social situation he lands into to the slip of paper. 

It shows a surprisingly good sketch of me holding a guitar in a box sort of thing with a name ‘jeanisnotahorse’ under bigger words that read ‘Anarchy - Original Song.’ I realize what Connie is implying, and look back at him while gaping. He fuckign drew what a YouTube video of my video uploaded would look like! I don’t know why he’s being so insistent about this, like what the hell?! Also, that’s actually not that bad of an idea for what I could call my YouTube channel…

Not that I’m going to have one! That isn’t what I mean. I just…  _ if  _ I did, that wouldn’t be a bad idea of what to name it. That’s all. It doesn’t really matter, because it isn’t like I’m planning on uploading my video to YouTube or anything. Though I did tell Connie that I was going to think about it in the car the other day, and … no. No, that’s so stupid. I’m not going to. That’s the end of it. 

… Well it’s not like I can’t just be true to what I told Connie that I would do. I mean, it’s not like just thinking about it in a totally theoretical sense means that I would ever act on it. I just can’t help but think, after all the stories that Connie has been putting in my head probably, that maybe if I did choose to upload that video it might be worth it in the long run. 

Realistically, I’m going to shut this down. Obviously this is a stupid train of thought. I should be working on math, for fuck’s sake! Why does Connie have to completely derail me with a reference at an idea, not even actually vocalising his thoughts.? It’s not like he could think that I have a chance of ever becoming something bigger than myself, or that I I have a promised future or something that I could only access by uploading that stupid video to YouTube. 

He’s right. I didn’t delete the video from my phone. I considered it, and I’m considering right now. Though, if I’m going to stay honest with myself, I’m less close to deleting the video in the way that I’m considering it than I am to uploading it with the different way of considering the second option that I’m doing. No, that’s stupid. So stupid. I refuse to let myself be this stupid.

Th bell rings, and I curse as I look down at the math problems I would have been able to finish if I hadn’t been distracted by the little sketch. “ _ You  _ bastard,” I mutter to Connie, and he leans back his head and outright laughs at me. I crumple up the little sketch on that white dainty slip of paper, and instead of throwing it away it somehow finds its way inside of my pocket. 

“You know, maybe if you really thought it was a hopeless thing you wouldn’t have been so distracted by it,” Connie teases me, and I flip him off. He’s being an idiot, really, because how am I supposed to be this great thing he thinks I could be? Ugh, he’s overestimating me. I’m not lying when I tell people that I’m a mediocre player, I’m really just being honest with myself. 

“Connie, shut it. You know that’s not happening,” I tell him, and he just cocks his head at me while also raising one of his eyebrows. I just hope he doesn’t go the full mile in this pose and decide to cock a hip or something because I do not need that much Connie theatrics in the middle of when I’m supposed to be using passing period. I’m supposed to be getting to health!

“Jean, let me just tell you something without you telling me that you’re not anything special. You’re good, okay? You’re  _ good.  _ If you never take advantage of that, I think it would be really sad.” He shrugs, and then walks away to his fourth hour class, leaving me standing in the hallway on my way to health with my mouth gaping open.  _ If you never take advantage of that, I think it would be really sad. _

That bastard. 

\-----

 

Friday morning opens up with the sound of my mom in my ear, though she isn’t in my room. She staying at the top of the steps, content to yell all the way down at me from there. “JEAN, YOU’RE GONNA BE LATE TO SCHOOL!” I groan under my breath, and rub my eyes to get some of the sleep out of them. Then, after managing to get out of bed, what she yelled at me clicks inside of my head.  _ Late, wait what - _

I look at my clock. Oh fucking shit. I should’ve been up thirty minutes ago! Normally, meaning in most any other school year, I would have been fine being a little bit late to school, and I would have still taken my time getting ready in the morning, but I have Eren and Mikasa to think about now. I should be leaving to go pick them up in five minutes! How did this even happen?!

Oh fuck. I look at where my phone and its charger cord are. Usually an alarm on my phone wakes me up but it appears that last night I just set my near dead phone down  _ near  _ the charger, and didn’t actually notice that I have to connect it to the charger cord for it to  _ work.  _ So not only am I going to be late, I’m going to let down people who are depending on me, but the reason for it is my  _ phone is dead.  _ Oh fuck me. 

I don’t have time to wait around and let my phone charge, so I just grab the charger cord and my phone, change my shirt and shimmy into some skinny jeans which I found on the floor that will probably end up cutting of circulation in my dick (RIP Jean Jr.), slip on a pair of black converse and don’t bother tying them before I run to my car, deciding breakfast is for losers and I can make it until lunch at school. “Bye Jean!” My mother cheerfully waves as I bolt out the door, backpack on me with only one of my arms through the straps. I resist the temptation to flip her off. Why didn’t she wake me up earlier?

I might end up muttering a quick goodbye under my breath as I close the car door fast and pull away, but I’m really not sure. Everything kinda blurs together at some point whenever I’m feeling rushed. I take deep breaths while I drive, and try not to speed too much on my way to Eren and Mikasa’s place, because technically I left on time to get there on time. Still, the rushed feeling doesn’t leave me. 

When I pull up to their place, Mikasa and Eren are waiting at the end of their driveway. Eren gets in the passenger seat and raises his eyebrow at me while Mikasa gets into the car too. “Jean, you kinda look like you were attacked this morning, are you okay?” I would normally attack him in return for that comment, but I can sense a little bit of actual concern behind his tone so I just sigh, letting the agitated sound go all throughout my body. If only he knew what I had done for his sorry ass. 

“I woke up like… thirty minutes later than I usually do this morning? I didn’t eat breakfast, I just fucking  _ bolted  _ out my room and into these clothes which… might be clean? I hope there isn’t like an embarrassing stain somewhere, and-” I take a deep breath, as my voice has gotten a little bit shrill if I’m going to be honest, and way too loud, before fixing him with a glare, “It was all for  _ you,  _ Eren Jaeger. And Mikasa. So you better fuckign not pull any shit today, because this morning has already made me want to go - fucking - death myself enough as it is. Yeah? Yeah. Let’s go.” 

Eren pulls a face like he’s actually a little bit scared of fucking with me today, which can’t be a bad thing really. Thank god for small miracles. Wait, I don’t believe in God. Fuckign hell, I’m a mess this morning, it’s an expression! I pull out of the driveway and try my best not to just  _ fuckign gun it  _ because that will help me let out some of my stupid frustrated feelings. There’s people in the car with me, I can’t be reckless. 

Mikasa doesn’t say anything in response to my whole rant about this morning and how it’s been a fuckign awful eperience already expect for a small, “Thank you for driving up, Jean,” that I can hardly hear. She’s still hesitant to talk to me when I’m mad sometimes, because the last time she was really confrontational about me needing to calm down was when I yelled at her for not even caring about me throughout the whole relationship we were in, which is kind of still a messy situation. I’ve since apologized, because that was a low move on my part, but we still haven’t completely recovered as friends since that time. 

What can I say? Our history together is kind of really fucking complicated. And then mixed in there is the whole Eren thing, where he would get mad at me and shit and pull fuckery to try and get back at me because he always took Mikasa’s side when we were arguing or going through shit, except for a few times. So she walks the space between us carefully, which I can’t help but feel guilty about. 

“Okay okay”, Eren says, his tone sounding a little bit cautious about even approaching me on any subject in conversation while I’m in a bad mood. “Y’know what, I appreciate you-” I shoot a glare in his direction at how borderline joking he sounds, and he almost stops talking completely. “So…” he continues, “today I will not call you horseface. For today at least, Jean is not a horse.”

Usually I would get just as mad at Eren for that statement as I would get mad for a statement with him actually calling me a horse, but the particular way he phrased that makes me not able to help thinking about the white slip of paper with a glorified doodle on it. ‘Jeanisnotahorse.’ Fucking hell. Connie should not have this much power over me and my thoughts. Or is it my thoughts and I? Wait, why do I even fucking care about some little grammar thing like that? God, I really am fucked with on mornings like this. 

“Hey Eren?” I say after a few moments of just driving and letting his words hang in the air between us. He looks like maybe he regrets saying that a little bit, but then again he probably is just acting. I don’t think Eren really genuinely regrets anything, and if he does then it’s maybe two things. He’s the kind of person who lives in the moment, and is so stupid as to take every little stupid thing he does as a monumental thing in the long run for him, so it’s all important and he’d never take it back. 

He bites his lip in hesitation for a moment, and then replies with, “... Yeah?” I wait for a few more seconds to reply to him, because I want him to squirm just a little bit. I want him to be worried about what a mad Jean on a morning he already knew was bad for me will say in response to him bringing up that stupid horseface thing that he says all the time. The little shit, what did I do to deserve that?

I just keep on driving, facing the road and clearing my face of any and all emotion before slipping in a  nonchalant sounding, “Fuck you.” There’s a moment or two of silence while I keep driving, and then Eren starts cackling like a fuckign mad man. I shake my head, hoping that the small smile creeping over my lips isn’t all too obvious, and it’s not like I said anything particularly funny but with Eren laughing at it like I’m a standup comedian I find myself feeling a little bit better about picking him up in the morning. 

When we get to school I’ve almost gotten over how bad the morning has been, Mikasa gave me a sandwich for breakfast from her lunch because she brought an extra one for Sasha but Sasha can deal with it, and Eren really hasn’t called me horse all morning, aside from when he indirectly called me one by saying that he wouldn’t. My mood is a bit better, and my stomach isn’t making noise like it’s a fucking maraca. 

And then when we get out, in the middle of Eren being in a sentence about Donald Trump and how he hates America, he starts cackling at me again. Only this time, it’s definitely laughing at me, and not with me about something actually funny. “What?!” I bark out at him, my mood souring again at him. Does he not realise that I’m a fuckig saint for sacrificing my mornings for him day after day? 

“You - you were right!” He chokes out through laughs. Mikasa seems to realise the same thing he did and can’t quite hide the tiny smile of amusement that creeps up and over her lips. I cock my head to the side, his answer didn’t give me shit in a ways of figuring out what the hell he’s laughing at. Why am I friends with such a dick, honestly? Why did I do this to myself?

“What are you fuckign laughing at, Eren?!” I ask him again, and after laughing for probably another good minute and me just straight up glaring at him, Mikasa decides it’s time to be a saint. She tells me, because her adoptive brother is too busy laughing like a motherfucking lunatic at me because he’s an awful friend, what Eren and her are finding to be so amusing. 

“Jean… you were right when you were talking about your pants earlier… Um, there’s a big white stain on your ass,” she informs me, while still smiling at the entertaining sight of my fucking up but at least she’s trying to hide it, unlike Eren fucking Jaeger over there. I let what she said process in my head, and before I can open up my mouth to curse at the sky, Eren decides to stop being a jackass. 

“Here,” he says, amusement still heavily colouring his tone, but not so much that he actually has to choke out the words like he did before. He takes the flannel shirt that he has tied around his waist (for his fucking aesthetic or something, I don’t know) and hands it to me. I take it, and take a moment to judge it too. It’s not all that bad, actually. A red and black checkered flannel, pretty simple and it more or less goes with what I’m wearing. At least I won’t look like a total fucking idiot all throughout the school day. 

“Thanks,” I say gruffly, still not completely over him taking a few good minutes to laugh at me when it’s really all his fault that my pants had a stain on them, when you look at it the right way. He’s a little shit, yeah, but at least he gave me his shirt to wear, so even though I’ll look like I’m dating Eren and stealing his clothes at least it won’t be obvious that I have a stain on my pants. 

“You’re lucky that I was wearing a flannel today,” he tells me, as I tie it around my waist and put my backpack on so we can walk to meet up with our friends. “Or you would be royally screwed. It would be funny to see you walking around all day with a big white stain on your ass though,” he adds as an afterthought. I roll my eyes at him, walking and ignoring how much my backpack hurts my back. Like holy shit, it hurts. 

“Well, Eren McFuckface, you’re lucky that I decided to give you a ride to school every single day when you live outside of the district, so I think we’re more than even.” He’s silent after that, not even bothering to try and deny it, and I can’t help but revel in the fact that I finally fuckign won in a conversation with Eren. When we get to the door of the school building, though, he turns back to me with that glint in his eyes.

“Race me?” he asks, the question in of itself more or less innocent. With Eren involved though? I don’t think anything is innocent.  I debate for a hot second before deciding, fuck it, I’m willing to risk it. I do notice that Mikasa is quick to get out of the way and into the school building before I can reply. Getting out of the danger zone, I suppose. 

“Hell yeah,” I reply, and we start to run towards the place that all our friends meet up in the morning, ignoring the judging looks of some students and the scowls of some teachers. We get there, and though I’m pretty sure it was a tie or Eren won, I proclaim loudly, “HA! I beat you, Eren.” He turns back at me with this look like he’s about to shriek at me with that surprisingly shrill voice he gets sometimes. 

“WHAT?!” He exclaims, and I think more than a few teachers turn their head to look at us. “I TOTALLY BEAT YOU JEAN, YOU LYING-” Mikasa pulls her hand over his mouth, rolling her eyes at him. He looks over at her with his eyes widening even more, slightly in outrage at me daring to say that I beat him in racing, but also in surprise that she’s stopping him from yelling even more. 

“Eren,” she says in a calm, lower voice. “You’re being far too loud.” He looks even more like he’s outraged, but this time it’s at the fact that Mikasa told him that he’s being too loud. I can almost hear him saying something indignant, or thinking that he’s never been too loud and he’s definitely not now, even though I know almost for a fact that the entire student population in the commons just now heard him. 

“Hey Jean,” Connie starts while everyone is distracted looking at Eren, and I can already tell where this is going. He’s going to find some roundabout (or not) way to mention that I should definitely create a YouTube channel and upload hat video that he wasn’t even supposed to see onto it, become famous and launch an incredible career in music and sing my way into the future or some shit like that.

“Connie, I had a bad morning and we are not doing this today,” I tell him in a somewhat clipped voice. He holds up his hands in a sort of ‘don’t shoot’ sort of gesture, and shakes his head. Then he takes a few steps back. God, am I really all that intimidating when I’m in a bad mood? I mean, I used to not think so because people tend to still fuck with me when they can tell I’m in a bad mood, but this morning has had me wondering if maybe I got scarier or something. 

“Not gonna say nothing,” he agrees, and I nod. Thank god. I’ve already been thinking about that fucking doodle of me and my guitar enough as it is, and hearing Eren say, “Jean is not a horse,” this morning in the car hasn’t helped out with that.

\-----

 

I’m stupid. That’s  got to be a proven fact by this point in time. I thought I had been over this, but apparently I’m not, because I’m staring at my laptop screen on a saturday night, debating the same thing I have been for the past ten minutes or so (past week or so but really what’s the big difference). Staring at the YouTube symbol and creating a channel called ‘jeanisnotahorse.’

Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Me creating the channel  _ does not  _ mean that I’m going to upload the video. I mean, it could very easily be me just humouring Connie a little bit. There’s no harm in just creating the channel, in just getting the aesthetic of it all chosen and making it look a little bit put together. It doesn’t have to mean shit, okay. This could very well amount to nothing in the long run. 

There is no harm in just importing my video onto my laptop, honestly. Nothing is implied by it, and it doesn’t  _ need _ to mean anything, so it doesn’t. It’s just as simple as that. Trimming it a little bit where it needs to doesn’t have to mean anything either, it’s just me being vain and listening to myself and letting myself be proud that I wrote a song. None of this shit I’m doing really has any significance. 

Really though, I can take back what I thought earlier. I’m not stupid, because it isn’t like I’m even even doing anything that I could be stupid about. What’s a little bit of self love? I’m allowed to be proud of something that I can do, even though it truly is mediocre. I mean, mediocre is better than a lot of people if I’m gonna be honest with myself. 

And, if we’re going to keep on that track of being honest with ourselves, there isn’t any harm in uploading my song. I mean, it’s an original so the grand likelyhood is that no one will even watch it. I mean, YouTube is chock full of original songs and aspiring artists that will probably get nowhere, so me adding mine to it doesn’t mean that it’ll go viral. There’s no harm at all in uploading it. I mean, it isn’t like I’m going to keep uploading music or covers or shit to YouTube. This could just be a one time thing after all. No need to commit to anything, no need to get anyone’s hopes up. 

Maybe that train of thought is why I find myself clicking the ‘upload’ button in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Maybe that’s the reason why I write a stupid little description, and then take the time to listen to find that place I wrote the words down on so that I can type out all of the lyrics up accurately in aforementioned description. Maybe that’s why I title the song and then put that it’s an original song in the title bar of the video. Maybe that’s why I wait for it to finish processing for what feels like forever, and then choose the thumbnail that my vain self thinks shows off my lips the best. 

Maybe that’s why, after all of this, I take a deep breath and click the now blue ‘upload’ button. Because I really am not a horse. Because it doesn’t mean anything. Because it’s just an aesthetic. Because it’s just humouring Connie a little bit. Because this could very well amount to literally nothing in the long run. Because nothing is implied by it, and there’s no harm, and even though it’s mediocre it’s me and I’m allowed to be proud of myself and my creation. Because fuck it, essentially. 

_ And there we go.  _ It’s uploaded, it’s done, it’s up there and out there for all to see or none to see if no one wants to see it, but god damn it, I am going to be my first view because if YouTube fucked up and it looks really fucking stupid then guess who’s taking down their video? Me. That’s who’s taking down their video. Surprise surprise, motherfuckers. I click on the video. 

Ther it is. I laugh a tiny bit, muffling it in my thought. I can’t believe I just did this. Oh my gd.  _ I can’t believe I just did this.  _ What if someone sees it?! What if someone likes it? That’s both exciting, and very incredibly terrifying. Oh my fucking lord in heaven. I don’t believe in God, but God send me … I don’t know. Something? Maybe just jesus. Am I hysterical?

You know, I have to be proud of myself for at least one thing, past the fact that I wrote and recorded a song, of course. The angle of this video is actually pretty fucking complimenting, I mean my lips look hot. That sounds weird. But honestly, I’m allowed to be vain. No one can judge me inside of my own head, and if I want to think that my lips look hot than I can. Ha. 

I think I really am hysterical, fucking hell. Still, maybe tonight I started a revolution. What if I started something? What if I started absolutely nothing at all? What if nothing will amount from this? What if everything amounts from this? Oh my fucking - I hadn’t considered something just yet. Oh holy fuck, this has made me almost regret everything in one second. 

What if  _ Connie  _ finds my channel? Shit. That could be a complete disaster. I mean, it could be perfectly fine, but he could also tell everyone, or he could tell no one, or he could tease me about it and say he was joking - oh my god what if he was joking the whole time when he told me I was good and now I’ve gone and fucked myself over? What if I’m less than mediocre? Fuck. Fuck me. 

 

\-----

 

I walk to Amsterdam on sunday morning, because my mom glared at me this morning and I’m too much of a pussy to then hop into my car. Maybe if I walk she’ll think that I’m being active or some bullshit and she won’t be in such a bad mood when I get back? Maybe I’ll be kicked out of the house once again, only this time for absolutely nothing. God, I don’t even know with my parents most of these days. 

Honestly, half the time they say that I spend too much time with my friends and don’t focus enough on my studies, and then sometimes they’ll just straight up turn on that subject and complain very loudly (upstairs so that I can hear it but technically I’m not in the conversation) that I’m kind of dumb and maybe no matter what I’ll do I won’t succeed in life because I was born for failure or some shit. I don’t know. There’s a reason that sometimes I get kicked out of my house, and the fights I have with my parents aren’t just over my wanting them to pay the gas money for my car. (Which, by the way, I pay the motherfucking gas money for that car.)

I pull out my phone when I’m a few houses away from mine in the direction of Amsterdam (I wait till then because honestly another thing that some parents, including mine, freak out about is phones. They see one and think that out of nowhere kids are neck deep in their phones and not paying attention to the world around them). Then I text both Connie and Sasha, and then for good measure Eren just in case, telling them I’m going to Amsterdam for a little while in case anyone wants to smoke with me. 

Eren texts back first, kind of surprisingly, saying that this is Mikasa and she will have me know that the day Eren goes to Amsterdam to smoke with me is the day that she also kills him and buries him in Amsterdam because he is not allowed to smoke those cancer sticks. I text her back to calm down, because I was… totally joking. God, I hope Mikasa doesn’t kill me now. She’s fucking scary as shit, man. 

Then Sasha and Connie text back at almost the same time that they’re sorry, but they’re actually going on an official sort of date to a nifty little restaurant and all today, so they can’t. Well shit. Looks like I don’t have friends anymore after all. I didn’t text Annie though, or Ymir. Or Historia. I can’t really see Annie smoking though, she cares too much about her temple body I think. Historia just wouldn’t, I can’t see it. I’m not really as close to Ymir, but maybe… ? Maybe it’s time to start. I mean, you don’t get closer to someone by not talking to them more or hanging out with them more. 

‘Hey,’ I start typing out. ‘You’ve come to Amsterdam a few times with us, and I’m going to smoke. Wanna come with?’ I mean, how much better does an invitation to literally go inhale deadly smoke into your lungs together go? If I’m going to be honest with myself, it’s a job well done. I seem to remember Ymir not being a fast replier though, so maybe it will have all been for nothing. 

Once I get to Amsterdam it’s only been about ten minutes, because I was taking my time walking there. My phone buzzes with a notification, which ends up being Ymir texting back to say that sure she’ll come smoke with me, and that she’s bringing Historia too because despite common theory, Historia smokes every once in awhile. Huh. Well, that’s certainly a surprise. I really wouldn’t expect that from … Historia. Maybe that’s a bit judgemental. Well shit. 

I had just always assumed that Historia was this sweet, innocent little creature who, I don’t know, really  _ was _ created from sugar and spice and everything nice. Honestly, she comes off as an angel when you only spend a little bit of time with her, and that impression never really goes away the more time you spend with her. I guess there really are two sides to every coin after all. Just. Huh. Wow. I’m really honestly taken by surprise. It’s probably getting a little offensive by now, but I can’t help it. She’s probably used to that reaction to her smoking by now, though, so I’m not gonna worry myself too hard about it.  

Though I kind of want to go into the park and climb up on a sculpture or some shit, I know that Historia and Ymir probably wouldn’t be able to find me very easily then. They might not even try, knowing Ymir, so I decide to just wait out by the park entrance, which is kind of inconvenient because the back of the park is close to my house so I have to walk all the way across the park to met up with Ymir and her girlfriend. 

When I get to the front of the park I have to wait for a good few minutes before they show up. Historia greets me with a smile, gentle and bright. Ymir smirks, and throws something at me. “Think fast, horse man!” She shouts, and I practically have to jump to catch it, because she actually isn’t very good at throwing. When I see what it is, it’s cigarettes. I give her an appreciative look.

“Ymir, you’re my new favorite,” I tell her. She shrugs, not actually being modest at all. She’s actually a riot, why don’t I spend as much time with her? Maybe it’s just because we haven’t talked enough. Because Connie is an attention whore, in the long run, and if he senses his best friends becoming better friends with other people he finds a way to slip in. Not really, but really. He’s kind of one of those jealous friends. It never gets really bad, but I don’t even notice it all that much anymore because I’m so used to it. 

“I know,” she replies in this cocky voice, and even though usually when people act like that, with her it’s endearing. I let myself go ahead and throw my head back and laugh, and Historia laughs too. “I’m everyone’s favorite. Well, everyone with good taste, at least. Everyone else is missing out. They can go fuck themselves.” Historia places a gentle hand on Ymir’s shoulder, and I let myself relax. Ease slips into my bones, replacing the worry that is almost always so deeply seated within me. 

I’m alright.

 

\-----

 

We’re sitting on top of this red sculpture in the park. It’s kind of complicated, but basically it’s this huge thing constructed of parts that resemble tubes, stacked up and leaning against each other. One of them is leaning against the others at a lower level, and the other one leans up against the other the opposite direction and runs up to the highest point of the sculpture. 

Now, we could to the thing that most pussy ass people do when they come across this sculpture, and climb up the admittedly easier lower tube that only goes up to about halfway up the sculpture at its highest point. I’m not a fucking wuss though, and when Ymir suggested I was after saying we should climb up the lower one, I proved that I wasn’t by running up the higher pole. 

They join me with laughs and Ymir saying I’m a little less of a pussy than she thought. I have to say, though, she is really wrong. We’re like more than fifty feet above the ground or something crazy like that, I think, and you know what? I’m terrified. And that is totally justified, especially with Ymir next to me. When they were coming up Historia had to come up first though, because she needed a boost to get onto the tube. Therefore she’s the one sitting next to me, so as long as she doesn’t suddenly hate me I think I’ll be good. Next to Ymir though? God save me. 

“So horseman,” Ymir asks while pulling her cigarette away from her mouth, “Done anything interesting lately? I mean, I only ever hear about shit that Connie pulls, you just kinda go along with it.” I shrug, thinking about that. Did she just call me Connie’s sidekick? What the fuck? Why can’t he be my sidekick? You know what, I’m already the third wheel of his and Sasha’s relationship, fuck him he’s the sidekick, not me. 

“Um…” I pause, considering. Do I even do anything interesting? I mean, I have fights with my parents sometimes. I drool over attractive people with the help of my hand sometimes. That’s kinda gross to phrase that way. Sorry. Uh, I guess I laugh at Eren a lot. I… play music on my instruments. I write music. I upload videos to YouTube- “Nope,” I tell her, because I’m not ready for anyone to find out about that yet.

Ymir raises an eyebrow at me. She takes in another deep inhale of smoke, and then puffs it out at a grey ish blue ish sky. “Has anyone told you you’re a shit liar, Kirschtein?” she asks. Historia elbows her and says something about her being rude, to which Ymir replies that it really isn’t her fault that I’m shit at lying to people. Maybe that’s a good thing. Who knows. 

“I’m not really that bad at lying,” I tell her, “especially when I have nothing to lie about. Like right now.” Historia looks up at me, and tucks a lock of her blonde hair behind her ear, raising an eyebrow much in a similar way to how Ymir raised her eyebrow at me only a few seconds previously. “What?!” I ask defensively to her look like she isn’t buying my shit.

“Ymir’s right Jean, you really aren’t all that great at lying,” she tells me, and the little smirk she gets on her face when she says that comes off as more sweet than cocky, unlike Ymir. They’re so different, yet so good for each other. Huh. She inhales a bit of smoke, and then closes her eyes and lets it simply come out of her mouth and cloud her face for a second. Then she turns to me again. “So what is it that you’re lying about. Jean?” She asks me, with this look like she won’t buy my shit. 

I take a deep inhale, letting the nicotine feel like it’s going to seep into my bones, letting the rush of chemicals cloud my thoughts enough to maybe tell Ymir and Historia about what I did the other night. I debate for a moment, before simply replying with. “Well, um, recently I did a … a thing.” Ymir snorts at me, and Historia huffs out a little laugh sort of thing through her nose. It’s cute. 

“ _ Wow, Jean,  _ that’s so descriptive,” Historia tells me, with her words all practically dripping in honeyed sarcasm. I stare at her, my eyes going wide. What the actual hell, where did this come from? I asked Ymir to come with me so that I could smoke, not get absolutely burned by her supposedly nice girlfriend. When did being mean to Jean become a thing that is okay to everyone?

“Way to completely  _ roast me, Historia,  _ what the hell why are you being mean to me? I thought you were the nice one,” I complain with my tone obviously joking, but actually like what. Why though. What did I ever do to deserve this from people? I’m kind, I promise. I mean, mostly I’m nice. Not mean enough to deserve group roast session every day, at least. 

“Sorry, but really, tell us. It’s not like we’re going to be judgemental if that’s what you’re worrying about,” she comforts me, a glint in her eyes from the sun in the sky of my favorite colours. Ymir nods behind her, commenting something about how she really isn’t in a place to be judging anyone on anything with all the shit that she pulls. Not that it means she doesn’t, she just shouldn’t. I laugh a little at that. 

“Well, you know how I enjoy doing things involving music? Like I play bass in our school orchestra, and I play the ukulele and the guitar and electric bass and shit like that outside of just orchestra too,” I say, unsure of how to really approach the topic. They just nod, Ymir inhaling more smoke into her lungs, and exhaling like the smoke is a lifeline, which is kind of ironic. 

“The other day, maybe a week ago or something? I decided that I wanted to write a song,” I say to them, hoping by their reactions that I don’t get roasted again. “Well, I started writing it before that, but around a week ago is when I finally finished it mostly. And I even decided to figure out fingerpicking and instrumentals to go along with it,” I tell them, trying to make this seem interesting. 

“That’s actually pretty cool, Jean,” ymir says, and Historia chimes in something too. But I hate myself, we have to remember that. I hate myself, so I decide that the mother of all bad ideas at this point (other than jumping off of where I’m sitting atop this really high red tube sculpture thing), which is telling them about the YouTube thing, is what I should do next. 

“Yeah, it is,” I agree, a little laughter colouring up my voice a little bit. “But I actually decided to record it, too. Um, and then after a little while, so a week I guess, I decided to, um…” I trail off and look at their expecting looks, waiting for me to finish. I awkwardly scratch the back of my neck and feel heat rise in my cheeks when I nervously say, “and I actually uploaded it to YouTube.” 

What happened to ‘I’m not ready for this?’ Jean? What happened to that, is what I’m asking myself. Because in the split second after telling them, with regret already starting to darken my vision and panic settling a little bit into my veins, I’m thinking maybe I should have gone with what I felt earlier. That entire ‘I’m not ready thing’ might have been more accurate than I had thought. Do I hate myself that much? Damn. 

But then the almost unimaginable happens. Historia outright ‘oohs’ at me, beamign, and Ymir’s eyes fuckign light up with excitement. “Really?!” Ymir asks, sounding way too happy for me, o excited for me, or something like that. I laugh again shakily, and nod, nervously inhaling smoke and almost choking on it. “Jean, that’s so cool!” She gushes out at me. 

“It is! Can you show us?” Historia asks, and that glint in her eyes is just too endearing to say no to. And then there is Ymir looking at me expectantly, and really I dug myself into this hole. I puff out the smoke at that sky that I’m not sure if I love or not, and shrug still a bit nervously. I mean, they seem excited now, but after they hear me will they do that fake praise thing where they just don’t want to be rude to me? God, I don’t know if I could take that. 

“Uh, well, ah I guess I can if you really want me to… ?” I end up phrasing it as more of a question then an agreement, but after they nod their heads vigorously I pull up YouTube, using up my data to play a stupid YouTube video with only one… oh. Huh. I had thought I was the only one to view the video, but it says three views. That means two other people already watched it. That’s… huh. I don’t know what this vague floaty feeling is in my chest, but I think I like it. And so, apparently, did one of the people who watched the video, because there’s one like on the video too. Fuck me in the ass, holy shit. That feels… really fucking nice. 

I give my phone to Historia, because she’s in the middle, and she holds it sideways so that the video is larger. There it is, me with that good angle for my lips (I’m still proud of that and unashamed), and that guitar. I look at them nervously, and Ymir comments, “Y’know, I’m mostly for the ladies and all, but props to you Jean, because your lips really pretty hot in this. You have nice lips.” 

“Thanks,” I say, and feeling kind of validated. It’s weird, feeling love and support when you expect criticism and skepticism. They watch me play the song with rapt attention, and I start to worry that maybe they’re wondering how to tell me it’s really bad without making me feel hurt. Let me just say, a lot of the pride I get at that video just kind of melts away when I’m showing it to people, and I’m struggling not to cringe at myself so hard that I fall off of this sculpture. 

The video ends, and then they’re turning towards me with almost matching expressions on their faces. I’m already bracing myself for the pity, or the carefully worded praise that sounds like someone really doesn’t want to offend you but is struggling. I’m so prepared for it, that I’m totally unprepared for the hug from Historia that almost straight up knocks me off the sculpture, the hug that gives me a fucking heart attack. 

“Jean!” She says, head buried in my shoulder. “That was so good! Why have you never told us about how talented you are?!” I try not to fall off of the sculpture as Ymir adds to the praise, saying that I’m actually pretty good at guitar and when I said that I was mediocre before I was most definitely lying. I smile, and try not to melt underneath the words of … admiration?

Usually I’m all for it. If you want to compliment my looks, man go ahead. If you want to go up and start complimenting my great taste in music, or my fashion sense, or my intelligence, or maybe how good I am at French, I am so for that. But the things that I’m really genuinely kind of… insecure about? I don’t know, I get kind of embarrassed when people compliment me on them. Because I’m really not all that good, I’m sure of it so why aren’t you too? I don’t know. It just makes me feel weird. 

“Honestly though, Jean,” Ymir starts, and I feel my stomach plummet to my feet for the second time today. The first time was when I realised how high up exactly we were on top of this red sculpture while looking down, and I don’t know why Ymir and Historia look so unconcerned by it. Now though, it’s plummeting to my feet because she sounds way too serious, and I think I can feel the criticism coming, 

“Yeah?” I ask, hoping that my hesitation doesn’t show on my face or inside of my tone of voice. While I would hate criticism, the thing I think that I would hate more is someone backing down from saying the truth to me because they don’t want to hurt my feelings. Bitch, go ahead, hurt my feelings, but don’t resist from telling me your opinion on me because of pity. I despise pity, and take it as an insult. If she hears me hesitation at hearing what she has to say, she better still not change a word of what she was going to say, or Ima cut a bitch. 

She smiles at me, one of those smiles that she doesn’t really pull out all that often. It isn’t a smirk full of gloating, or a wasted look of drunken glee, or a look like she’s so ready to destroy the system and she’s a clever little shit. It’s the kind of genuine smile I would expect to see on Historia’s face while she gave a teacher cookies or some shit. Way out of character for Ymir. “I really like it. You’re a little bitch for lying and saying you’re mediocre.” 

I wait a second. I could tell her to fuck off or something, out of embarrassment because of that thing I mentioned, but I feel like that would be the wrong thing to do. I bite my lip in a second of thinking, and then smile back, way more gentle than I usually smile. I take a deep inhale of smoke, and exhale it to watch pretty swirls of grey against a similar coloured sky.

“Ymir?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

 

\-----

 

Monday actually passes much faster than I thought it would. I wake up with not even a small headache, which is nice. I don’t wake up thirty minutes late, which is way nicer. God, that morning where I did might have broken a little bit more of my soul than I thought. While getting ready I make sure that the jeans I choose (which are blue skinny jeans, and I like wearing all black but they’re dark blue so I guess it’s okay) don’t have a fuckign stain on the ass. I don’t want to have to hope Eren’s being a stereotypical gay today. 

When I get to first hour with Connie, our teacher is feeling nicer than usual and lets us have a work day on this project involving like shakespeare or something. No offense to all shakespeare lovers and all, but I kind of really detest when we have to work on his works. They’re confusing, and I honestly don’t give a shit whether he’s the second most referenced person in all time or not. Sorry I guess if anyone loves him. But back on topic, with how much I struggle with understanding what he’s even fuckign saying most of the time, it’s nice to get a day in class to just work. 

After first hour with Connie, it’s off to Orchestra. It’s in Orchestra class that I realise I never told Connie about my YouTube channel. I feel a little bit bad about that, because he’d probably want to be the first to know. Ymir and Historia beat him to being the first to know, but I think he’s still want to know. He would like the fact that I used his idea for a channel name I think. When I checked it earlier today the video had another view, so that means five views now. That’s a kind of oddly exciting. 

There was that first view from me, I know, that first moment in the night that I uploaded it. Then there were two views that came at some point, from someone. I don’t know who. Then one of them liked it. Then I watched it with Ymir and Historia, so that’s four views. And then, when I checked the video this morning, there were five views, meaning one other person saw it too. One other person shares my secret. 

It isn’t  _ exactly  _ a secret anymore, I told Historia and Ymir anyway, so it’s a badly kept secret if it is one. I’m not really trying to keep it from Connie, it just really didn’t occur to me to tell him when we were together today. Though it would be easy to tell him over text, I feel like I can’t do that now, I’m in Orchestra and if I was caught with my phone out in class it might be taken away, and even worse Nanaba might stop liking me.  Nanaba’s a really cool teacher, I don’t want them to stop liking me. 

I guess I’ll just tell him later.

The rest of monday passes in a flash, though. Lunch goes by with Sasha telling me something about her toes that I really didn’t want to know about, especially not at lunch of all times, and then gushes to me about her date with Connie that she missed hanging out with me to go on (and during that story she tells me things about Connie I really never wanted or felt like I needed to know about him, you know what I mean?)

Then French goes by with feeling more and more cocky due to how much better I am at listening than most people, a gift from the gods I swear. Maybe I should write a song in French. Maybe I shouldn’t be thinking about that. After French science with Hange goes by with me being just as confused about Hange’s gender identity as normal. Then, after a learning lab in seventh hour, I realise that I still never told Connie. It slipped out my mind. I honestly wasn’t even trying to keep it from him, it just happened. 

I’ll tell him tomorrow, though, because my phone died in seventh hour so I can’t text him about it. Well, when my phone gets charged I could, but I’ll probably forget about it. I might get lost doing something like playing a game on my phone. Or recording a new video. I have a tune stuck in my head that I might commit to a chord progression sometime soon… 

And in that way, Monday passes me by. Tuesday morning greets me with sleepy eyes and I’m moving more sluggish this morning than I usually do. My coffee kind of tastes bad when I chug it down, but that’s okay. My joggers definitely don’t have a stain on the ass, and I think that might be a bit for a few of mine now, because I don’t see myself not checking for that in the future even if I know that the clothes just got cleaned. What can I say? I’ve been traumatised. I’m really not getting over it anytime soon. 

When I pick up the Jaegers outside of their house, Eren looks at me weird. Honestly,it’s been like two weeks and I really want to know what’s going on with him and Levi. Are they even really dating? Has Eren told Mikasa about it yet? So many questions for him, and as of now none of them have answers. I mean, I get him not telling Mikasa yet, because she might straight up attack Levi just for looking at Eren, but I wouldn’t attack Levi, so why won’t Eren spill the beans to me? We’re friends, he can trust me. 

“So Eren,” I say while we’re in the car. He turns to me with a little bit of surprise in his eyes. I guess that’s because while we’re in the car it’s usually him who starts all of the conversations, Mikasa not doing it because she just kind of avoids talking all that much with me and not me because I’m way to grumpy and antisocial in the morning usually. “You haven’t complained to me about your love life in a while. Have you met some hottie or something?” 

His eyes widen, and while he looks a little bit like he wants to kill me, I think he gets the whole ‘tell me what the shit is going on between you and Levi’ message that I’m sending. Maybe I went for a low blow in my way of telling him, especially right in front of Mikasa (who’s ears I could practically see perk up from where she is in the second row of the car at the sound of Eren maybe having a love life). 

Let me get one thing straight though. Mikasa isn’t straight up insane, and I’m mostly just joking around when I describe her as the overprotective helicopter sister. But there is some basis of truth there. She does get really protective of Eren, but usually not on the level of killing someone or Eren just for being romantically involved with Eren. It’ not like she has a thing for him, god no, she’s gay and sees him as a brother, nothing more than that. But with him being pretty much all she has family wise other than Mrs. Jaeger, she tries her hardest to not let anything hurt Eren. It’s mostly admirable.

To Eren, though, it gets pretty annoying pretty fast. I can get that. He just wants to date who he wants without Mikasa judging them and assuming they are going to hurt him at first glance. Maybe I’m a little at fault for that, just because of my history with Mikasa and all. It isn’t just my fault for the way things turned out between us though, and there is always going to be a place in my heart that loves her, as I hope there’s always a place in hers that loves me. It’s just… complicated. I’ll let myself think more about it later, maybe. To Eren, he really doesn’t see the way that Mikasa can act towards the idea of him dating as her caring for him ad looking out for him, he kind of sees it as her just getting in his way of getting laid, more or less. Which, I can get that too, but overall it’s just kind of a tense, complicated situation. I just want to know. 

“Eh,” he replies to me, feigning nonchalance in the situation, even though I’m pretty sure that he’s going to yell at me for mentioning this in front of Mikasa later. “Nah, haven’t met anyone new. Really it;s just the same old, same old for my love life.” Then he turns around to face Mikasa. “What about you, ‘kasa? Have you asked out that blonde girl you seem to like yet? Annie, was it?” Then Mikasa blushes a little bit in the back seat.I almost laugh at that, I hardly ever see her blush and it’s nice to see her moving on to someone she really likes who might like her back as well. I still love her, and want the best for her. Seeing her happy is… nice. 

I spare a few glances back at her while she halfheartedly glares at Eren fo bringing up her girl crush. “I… haven’t asked her… officially… yet,” she admits, fiddling with her hair a little bit. I’ll admit, I only know who Annie is because Mikasa met her and then Annie started hanging out with Mikasa, meaning she then hung out with the rest of the group. They have this weird thing going on where they’re sort of dating? I think everyone, including them, are confused by it. I think Mikasa should just go for it and officially ask her to be her girlfriend, clear up all the confusion. I feel like Annie being around is good for Mikasa. 

“Why not?” Eren asks, a not very well hidden note of teasing strung along in his voice when he speaks to Mikasa. “I mean, you guys have been dancing around each other for a while now. It’s not like she’s going to say no to you. We can all tell that.” I make a sort of humming noise to voice my agreement without having to turn around, I face the road while I’m driving because I’m a good diver, but I also like to face people when I’m talking to them so I have to be careful about talking while I’m driving and paying attention to the road. 

“I just… I don’t know, Eren,” she sighs a little bit. “I mean you guys all say that, but if she actually rejected me I might break a little. I don’t know how well I can take that…” I can almost hear the unsaid  _ again  _ that belongs at the end of that sentence. She can’t take that  _ again.  _ Because I know very well I broke her once, I didn’t particularly mean to or want to, but it happened and there are some things that will never and can never be the same as they once were after that. It’s just how the way of things works, so it goes and all that. I bite my lip, trying to push away the guilty feelings that attack me whenever I think of what happened with Mikasa. I remind myself that even she said we’re both guilty. 

“Oh come  _ on,”  _ he complains as we pull up to the school building and I pull into my school parking lot. “Like she’s going to reject you. Have you even  _ seen  _ the way that she looks at you? I swear Mikasa.” He’s still teasing, but I can tell he’s also still nervous that I’ll bring up the whole relationship[ thing regarding him again. Agh, another low blow from me. I should really stop doing that to people, but I can’t help it. I’m a dick of a person, what can I say? It just happens. I promise that I can be a more or less nice person sometimes, but people (especially Eren) tend to bring out my inner dick. Especially when they go ahead and make out on my car.

\-----

 

One wednesday, I nearly have a heart attack during fourth hour, because Marco uploaded a video. It’s titles ‘Painting ‘Evening Out With You’ Time Lapse.’ I swear, that boy is so talented. He can sing, he can come up with really fuckign profound thoughts, he can write crazy long ass novels in the month of November, and he can make art that is so good that I actually want to go and die. Why god? Why when you decided to create Marco and I you gave him a fuck ton of skill and good looks and shit, but you gave me mediocre skills and a face that way too many people agree to call a horse face? Why? I don’t understand how this is fair. 

The crazy thing about the video is that it’s like two minutes long, but still a time lapse. He worked non - stop on this painting for a long enough time to make a two minute long time lapse. I know that I for one made a time lapse of three hours once and it lasted about twenty five seconds, so that really says something about how long he worked on it. How is his concentration so good? And why do his arms look that nice while doing something as simple as gripping a paintbrush or palette knife?

I also kind of want to cry, because the painting ends up really good. He has this cool sort of abstract and sort of realistic style that he uses, and it works out really well. This painting is of a park bench by a street light sort of looking tall lamp thing, and on the bench is a girl who looks almost crafted from raindrops and another girl next to her who looks like a normal human. The girl of raindrops also is blushing, which is crazy because he made her look like she’s made out of raindrops, so how is that possible? The normal looking girl has her long dark legs pulled up against her chest, showing the sharp contrast of colour from her dark legs to her white shorts and blue shirt and the dark of the night surrounding them, all illuminated by a tall street light looking thing. Why are people allowed to be so much better than me in every way? Even his fucking signature, a MB signed in the upper right hand corner of the canvas, looks good and artistic and all that shit.The way he made is it so good too, his techniques all look crazy cool in the time lapse. Seeing it all come together and seeing someone work on something that means something to them for that long is honestly so cool. 

Then again, I tend to just find Marco in general really cool. He can sing, he can write poetry, he can do all sorts of things, and he’s just a normal university student just making his way through life like everyone else is doing. I’m kind of amazed by how he doesn’t have millions of subscribers. He doesn’t have the whole fangirl base thing that a lot of YouTubers do. He has a little bit of it, but many of the people who watch him don’t do it just because he’s hot, but because he makes art. 

I might have just insulted a lot of YouTubers unintentionally and said that they don’t make art, but really… where’s the lie? I don’t know, a lot of the YouTubers that dominate YouTube kind of bug me. Just doing this challenge or another, not really being original. Then there’s Marco. 

I wish that I could rant to Connie about how cool Marco is, but then I think that and realise he would just tell me that I need to create my own YouTube channel so that people can crazy fangirl (fan _ boy,  _ I would correct him when he said that about me) over me and my skills. Which… I have created my own channel. Huh. I just still haven’t… gone ahead and  _ told  _ him about it yet. Oops. 

By the time I realise that I went another maybe two days without telling him and just didn’t notice or remember to, it’s already Wednesday night at like eleven in the night. Though he might be awake, he might not be and I feel like I shouldn’t risk waking him up. Maybe that’s just ,e being a pussy and being afraid that he was joking about me starting a channel for real, I don’t know and I don’t care. I just tell him tomorrow. I know that I’ve been telling myself I’ll just tell him later for almost a week now, but I promise I’ll get to it eventually. 

While thinking about it, I decide to check out my video another time. I mean, I haven’t checked it since when I looked at it and I had five views on my video, so maybe I should do it again. Maybe there will just be five views still, five views and one like, but maybe there…  Will be more? I mean, I can let myself hope about it, can’t I? There’s no rule that says I can’t hope. None. Not one at all. I click on the ‘my channel’ button on the screen on my laptop, and watch as my computer takes forever to load. Ugh. Why must my wifi be so very slow?

Finally, it loads. And I have… seven iews. Woah. That’s two more. And another like. Oh, that’s cool. Way to validate myself. Oh and… someone actually left a comment. I mean,I realised that people might do that, but the fact that I made something that someone likes enough to actually comment on is a little bit crazy. Ha. Haha. I’m going a little bit insane. Maybe this is why I didn’t want to do YouTube. Maybe this is why I shouldn’t have uploaded that video that night. Maybe this is why it _ was  _ a good idea. After all, are you really living your life right if you don’t act a little bit crazy sometimes?

**MusicManiac**

This is GREAT.

 

Three words. That’s it,really. It’s only three words overall. But then again, three words can have more power than entire paragraphs sometimes. Three words like ‘I love you.’ Or three words could very well be something as drastic as ‘I am dying.” Or maybe it could be ‘I’m kinda hungry.” In this case the three words ‘This is GREAT’ have found a way to invade my mind. A way to make me smile. Three words, that to me, mean everything. 

 

\-----

 

It’s that friday when I realise that I still have not told Connie that I uploaded the video. We’re in the middle of lunch, so right after my fourth hour class, and Sasha says something about me being a horse that reminds me of the YouTube channel. Because of it’s name and all that jazz. Because I truly am not a horse and I don’t get why people call me one or say that my face looks like one all the time because it makes me kind of sad. Just earlier in the day I checked it again to see my video has now ten views, and another comment complimenting me. Three likes. Three! I don’t know why, because if anyone else had that I would snort and call it pathetic, but for me it really is a lot. It’s crazy. It’s incredible. Three!

Anyway, I’m thinking about my channel and being proud of myself when I look over at Sasha, who’s still talking to me. Sasha, who’s been one of my best friends for such a long time. Sasha, who’s dating the other person who only just barely has been my best friend longer than her. Sasha, who’s dating Connie. Connie, who I still haven’t told about what was his idea in the first place.  _ Fuck.  _

I honestly meant to tell him, I really did. I can atest for myself, I have been meaning to for a week. Damn, I should have written it down or something, because I kept forgetting to tell that boy. Sasha notices my pause in paying attention to her. “Jeanbo?” she asks. “Why are you so distracted?” I wave her off, saying something about being tired, not getting enough sleep, and her face softens. 

“Oh, Jean, I actually worry about you, you know. And Connie. I mean, sure I stay up all night most of the time, but like also I want you to get more sleep.” I give her a look with a raised eyebrow and she nods at what she said, because when I won’t validate her she’ll just go ahead and validate herself in my place. I mean, usually I’d validate her but not when she says something stupid like that. I mean, she actually just went and contradicted herself. 

“Stop being a mom, Sash,” I tease her, and her face sours a little it, before she teases me back. 

“What if maybe I don’t actually care about you then, Jean?” she almost coos at me. “What if you’re just a grumpy piece of shit when you don’t get enough sleep and I’m hiding my aggression at you being grumpy with fake concern and caring and love?” I raise my eyebrows and feel my eyes get wider at her words. Damn, Sasha, really laying it on that sarcasm and meanness and other not nice synonyms thick, aren’t you? 

“Well shit, I feel unloved,” I say sarcastically. She smirks, and shrugs like she doesn’t care.

Gosh I sure do love my friends. 

 

\-----

 

It’s around ten at night when I decide to text Connie. ‘hey man’ I text him. Then I go and copy the link to my channel, take a deep breath, and send it. ‘ [ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3fv7rXpIdpdiQE5VYowkzg ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3fv7rXpIdpdiQE5VYowkzg) ’ then, for good measure, I text ‘lolllllllll’ underneath it to undermie how seriously my heart is pounding insdie of my chest, like a fucking drum reminding me I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive and I’m a little bit panicky at the moment. I tell myself it;s stupid, I mean he was the one who puches for it for a  _ week  _ before giving up. He was the one who told me I was good enough to get millions of fans and all that stuff, more or less. He would be the most supportive of anyone, logically. So why am I so nervous?

Though I guess I sent the text relatively late, he responds within four minutes. ‘DUDE YOU DID IT I’M SO PROUD OF YOU AND U USED THE NAME U USED THE NAME YOU MAKE ME HAPPY MY SON AGH PPPPRRROOOOUUUUDDDD!!!!!!!!’ I almost straight up choke on my own breath. Well damn. I guess you could say that I’m a fucking idiot for ever panicking about/doubting his love and support. 

I hesitate to text him back, because I’m a little bit scared that he’s going to take that as a green light to go ahead and spam with with text messages spouting his love and validation for me, which is great and all but not when it’s the 100th message or something along those lines. Yes, he has done that before. And then he got Sasha in on it too. I think my phone at the time actually shut down because of how many messages I was getting at once, no joke. I was pretty pissed at them, and not feeling the love so much anymore. And sure, my phone now is way better than my phone at the time, but I don’t know if that means I’m willing to risk it. 

Aw, fuck it. Why not. Fuck me. I can just shut down my phone on my own to spare it if he starts spamming me. ‘Thanks dude,’ I say. ‘I actually forgot to tell you all week that I had done it lol, so historia and ymir saw it before you.’He texts me back,’ but jeaaaaan?! how could you?! We’re having a child together and /they/ got to see it first?!’ I test him, ‘that’s what you get for skipping hanging out with me to go on a date.’

And then Connie goes ahead and spills to beans to basically everyone at once. ‘Oh, speaking of that, sash should see this!!! its so good!!!’ Before I can tell Connie  _ no  _ I’ll get to that myself when I have the balls to tell everyone at once because telling Sasha and telling everyone is basically the same thing, he texts ‘did it.’ Well fuck me. Fuck me in the ass with a mother fucking banana. 

Still, if the strings of texts I get from almost all of my friends then almost all night of support and love and stuff isn’t enough to make it worth it, then nothing is I guess. I mean, I wasn’t particularly ready for everyone to know,but that’s okay, because I can bat up Connie later with all of my other friends right there behind me. I mean, it wasn’t ever really a secret, but everyone knowing is… I guess not as bad as I thought it would be. Not… not even close. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey so this update was a lil late whoops
> 
> that link isn't a link to Jean's channel girl, but it is to mine so if you wanna check out my YouTube channel I make songs and cover songs and sing and be gay lol. I'm doing a thing called osedia rn where I upload an original song every day or April. I mean. What's not to love?
> 
> also if there are inconsistencies in my plot you should tell me because sur eI make mistakes but I also want to fix them you feel, and also no beta read so there's that if you wanna be my beta tell me god I need one


	3. Never Wanted To Dance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again, I don't have a beta. If you see a mistake please tell me lol. Also Jean his kinda based off of me so if you want to go check out my YouTube it's in my bio and I think the notes but don't feel obligated to. anywayyyys, if you want to maybe be a beta reader you should message me because I would love that, now on with the chapter.
> 
> title of the chapter comes from 'never wanted to dance' by mindless self indulgence

My video on YouTube got a total of ten views, two comments, and two likes on it before I told Connie, and he told Sasha who then proceeded to tell all of our friends. They’ve all subscribed to me now, and some people like Annie even made a YouTube account just to subscribe to me. All in the last hour or so too which is a bit impressive, and definitely not what I expected. I’d say that I’m… touched, if not a little embarrassed. The only thing is, ever since then Connie has been asking me what I’m planning on uploading next. 

You know, sure, that’s great. Love, support, all of the things I need that I feel I receive in my friendships. Except I really am not all that good at the guitar, and when Connie texts me five texts about how he has “a few” suggestions on what to put on my channel, it can feel a little… overwhelming to say the least. I mean, I love him to death, but he’s about pressuring me to death it feels like. 

Just to shut him up, I told him via text that for the record I wasn’t doing anything that he had suggested next, because I already know what I want to do next. The funny thing about that is I kind of need an idea of what to cover first. Definitely not write, because I’m nowhere near done with any new songs or anything. I have vague floaty ideas in my head, nothing really past that. 

_ ‘Well what’s your gr8 idea mr grumpy?’ _ Connie texts me, and I sigh. He has an iphone,so he can see that I’ve read the text, goddamnit. I never asked for this. It’s only been an hour or so since I told him, but that’s an entire hour or so for him to already make me regret it.  Okay, okay. Don’t get me wrong. I feel like I have to say this way more than I should have to, but I really do love and appreciate Connie. He’s one of my very best friends in this world, and my life would be shit without him in it. 

Now, with that out of the way, sometimes I find him more annoying than a little third grader trying to play the recorder. Or perhaps as annoying as a piece of food that gets stuck in our teeth that no matter what just won’t get out, and it’s presence is a constant weight on your mind. Or maybe he’s as annoying as that kid in class who always thought he was smarter than the teacher and would interrupt all the time to get his two cents in, the kid everyone hated and wanted the teacher to just put back in his place.

Okay, so maybe he isn’t as annoying as all that. But you have to admit, it can be annoying when you don’t really know what you want to do wuite yet, you just want it to be your idea, and someone keeps badgering you about it. God, I was worried about telling him about the YouTube channel because I thought maybe he was joking about him thinking I’m good. I should have been worried about this the whole time, I’m an idiot. 

I still have to text him back though, so I just pick the last song I can remember listening to. ‘I’m going to cover ‘never wanted to dance’ by mindless self indulgence,’ I tell him. There’s a pause in his texts and I think I know why. He… doesn’t really like music like the kind that mindless self indulgence makes. I’m not that band’s biggest fan, but I find some of their music to be really cool. Never Wanted to Dance is a lit song, so I should have fun covering it. I also already know the chords and even some fingerpicking for it, so I don’t even have to take the time to learn it. 

When he finally texts back he says, ‘um good for you uh sounds like fun.’ I snort. Even over text, he managed to convey so much of the sarcasm that drips through his words. I can hear him say it. In his voice and everything, loud and clear in my head. Maybe that’s the sign, the one I should really take seriously, that I’ve been spending far too much time with Connie Springer. 

‘It is fun,’ I reply, feeling only a little bit like I’m gloating. I’m not, not really, it just makes me happy that in this way at least I can flaunt my music taste in Connie’s face and there’s nothing he can do about it. It’s my YouTube channel, is it not? I can post and upload onto it whatever I want to, and it’s all my choice. That’s actually kind of freeing. ‘I already know all the chords and stuff so it should be pretty fucking easy.’

Before Connie can reply again, I decide I should try and sleep. I know it’s only around ten at night (okay so it’s more like ten forty five but I’m trying to get to bed earlier and if the first number on the clock is ten then that’s what I’m going to go with, I’m going to take what I can get) but I should be trying to get to bed. I know that it’s friday, so I have all the time to sleep in tomorrow morning, but my sleep schedule borderline needs medical help and I’m feeling responsible tonight. 

 

\-----

 

When Connie comes to my house in the morning, I don’t think it surprises anyone. I wake up to him jumping on my bed, nearly destroying my legs with his carelessness. “Jeanbo!” he says (more like yells) at me. “Get up! I want to be here when you record your video!” I’m tired, but a bolt of fear runs through my veins at him yelling that at me, and it causes me to shoot up from where I’m laying down in my bed. 

“Oh my god, shut the  _ fuck  _ up!” I borderline yell at him. He wrinkled his brow in confusion, and I hiss under my breath, “Just because I told my friends does not mean that  _ my parents  _ know that I’m doing weird YouTube shit, Connie! Fucking hell, I think that the only place that didn’t hear you just now was China!” He gives me a look like I’m overreacting and I kinda want to punch him a bit. Why isn’t he taking this as seriously as I’m taking it? He knows. 

I mean, I think he knows. I’ve literally been kicked out of my house before and had to go to his because of all the times when my parentals have been absolute shit to me. He knows probably better than all of my friends what it does to me, and how much I detest it. Why does he look so unaffected then? Doesn’t he know how much my nerves are dying? Can’t he tell that saying shit like that loudly actually fucking destroys my mind?

“ _ Relax,  _ Jean,” he tells me, floppign on hsi butt so that we’re facing each other from where I’m sitting up in bed. “If you hadn’t slept in so late you would have seen the note on your kitchen table saying that both of your parents are going on a very cutesy little coffee date this morning. How adorable. More important, they’re out of the house! You can be as loud as you want.” I let that news process in my mind, and then take a nice, deep breath. Thank god. Thank… I don’t even care what I’m thanking at this point. 

“Ohhhhh… My god,” I breath out. “Connie, my man, I love you but you almost just killed me. It was like you straight up woke me up to an injection of hard core stress right into a motherfucking  _ artery.  _ Oh my god.” I’m still getting over that. I’m kinda pissed, that is not how I like being woken up on a saturday morning and I really don’t appreciate it. Connie doesn’t seem to care, he’s just getting excited at my guitar. I can tell because of the way he keeps glancing at it. Wow, that’s really subtle Con - Man. 

“Soooo…” he trails off, and then grins wide mouthed while more obviously (if that’s even possible at this point) looking at my guitar. “When are you going to record the cover?”  I stare at him. Just straight up. Stare. I kinda want to ask him to look at me, am I really in the place at the moment to be recording a cover? I’m not wearing a shirt? I’m just wearing black boxers? Does he expect me to record a cover like this? I mean, it  _ is  _ a mindless self indulgence cover… No. that’s a bad train of thought. Just no. 

“Connie,” I say to him, pushing him off my bed and then stepping out of it to reveal that I’m literally only wearing black boxers right now. “Do I look like I’m in the right place of mind to be recording a cover video right now?” He laughs at me, putting his hand over his mouth like he thinks that I’m going to get mad at him for laughing at me (which I do get mad, a little bit), and like he thinks putting his hand over his mouth will somehow hide it from me. Connie? I don’t get your logic sometimes. 

“Jeanbo!” he exclaims, finally letting some giggles through his hands. “That’s so scandalous! We’ve got to get you dressed!” he rushes off to my closet, and I sit own on my bed, resigning myself to the fact that Connie is way too excited to say no to right now. I think if I even told him that I’m going to dress myself he’s get mad at me and say no, so I’m just going to let him do his thing. It seems to be making him happy anyways. At least on top of all the shit there’s that. 

He hands me a tank top that soon it’ll be too cold to wear outside. It says ‘don’t be a waste of space’ on it, with an alien ship beneath the words. Kind of cheesy, but I wear it every once in awhile because space is cool and sasha bought it for me while going on holiday with her family over summer break one year, in this foreign country somewhere. I don’t remember where exactly though, they go to exotic places all the time. It’s a little bit hard to keep track of all the places that she has gone. 

I sigh, and put on the tank top. Then I pull on some grey skinny jeans that he hands me off the floor. I can see him snickering into his hands when I check the ass to see if it has a stain or not. “Fuck off, I’m traumatised,” I say a little bit defensively. He rolls his eyes at me, and I look down at myself. Wow. What an outfit to be filming a mindless self indulgence cover in, am I right? I kind of hate it. “I feel a little bit ridiculous,” I tell Connie. He shrugs nonchalantly.  

“I mean, you’re going to look ridiculous either way,” he tells me in a teasing voice. “With a face like that? No one’s going to take you seriously from the start.” I half glare half gawk at him, and he chuckles into his hand. “Okay, fine. You don’t look that ridiculous.” I keep glaring at him. “Fiiine, your face isn’t all that ridiculous looking. Can you move on now?” I debate for a second.

“Yeah, fine, but you suck dick,” I tell him, only a little bit upset about how fast I am to forgive him when he’s a mean friend. I have far too much of a soft spot for him, I’ve decided. He’s a mean. A mean friend. He doesn’t react the way I would like him to with my little jab at him though, he just winks at me in a provocative way and poses in a way that should really be made illegal. 

“Only yours, baby!” He coos, and I cringe harder than I think I ever have at anything before. Oh my god. I personally hate when people call other people baby in romantic ways, even when they’re joking. That coupled with Connie fucking  _ posing  _ that way makes me unsure whether I want to claw my eyeballs out of my head first, or my ears off of my head. Either way I actually want to go and die because of Connie. Ha ha ha until I want to go and death myself. Where’s the bleach.

I feel like that’s offensive to somebody. I’m sorry, somebody. Not really, because personally I think that jokes about my precariously close to collapsing mental state makes me funnier than I ever have been, but I guess it isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. Once again, sorry to all the somebodys. 

“Never say that again. Please,” I beg him, in a monotone voice. Why does life hate me this much. What did I ever do to you, life? “Can you hand me my guitar and my phone, if I’m going to do this?” I ask in a bored voice. He practically jumps up and down, he’s so excited. I hope he doesn’t break my guitar. I sit down on my bed, resigned to my fate, and set up my phone, which is how I’m recording this video I suppose. Should I include my face in this video? I feel like I should so that less of the space shrit shows. No offense to Sasha or anything, I just really don’t feel like anyone could take me singing mindless self indulgence seriously while I’m wearing this shirt. Just. Not happening. 

“Oooh, are you letting your face show for this video?” he asks me, seeing how I setup the camera on my phone. I nod, sighing a little bit. “That’s brave, I think. I mean, showing your face on the internet is risky. Being willing to do it is cool. Maybe you’ll get more subscribers because girls will find your horse face attractive.”

I frown. “Hey Connie?” I ask him, trying to make my voice sound as nice and not suspicious as possible. He turns around, his face open and like he’s waiting for me to continue. I smile in a way that could probably be almost described as pleasant. “You know what my favorite animal is?” He keeps waiting for me. I let the smile drop, and flip him off. “A bird.” 

He stares at my finger with wide eyes for a second, like he’s trying to keep it together. I stay silent. After a moment of that weird tension, he laughs, and shatters the atmosphere I had created ever so delicately, the atmosphere perfect for flipping someone off. You can’t just flip people off any old way, you know. If you do it while smiling they might think you think what they did is funny. If you do it fast than they might not notice. If you do it the way I did, however, you lure the person in and then go in for the metaphorical kill. Maybe I am letting myself think to hard about just flipping someone off. I still won though, so Connie can go suck on that.

“Give me the stupid guitar,” I tell him with some of the remaining humour still lacing my voice, stretching out my hand. He complies, and I let my fingers slide over the wood, delicately tracing over the strings and making sure that it is in tune. One of the things that bugs me the most is when someone goes to do a cover, and it could be really good, but they didn’t bother to tune their instrument so I spend the whole time listening to it cringing in misery. I will absolutely refuse to be one of those people. 

“Do you need to warm up?” Connie asks me when I go to turn on the camera. Ha. “Camera.” I really need to get myself a camera if I’m going to take myself seriously as a YouTuber, honestly. Then I let Connie’s question process in my head. He’s actually… not being dumb. That makes sense. I should warm up first. Huh. Connie, my main man, you’ve surprised me. In a good way, I promise. 

“Uhmm,” I trail off, looking at him. “You’re… probably right,” I admit to him, and he punches the air while making an obnoxious victory sound. Well fuck you too, Connie. It’s morning, I’m sorry I can’t be perfect. Just kidding. Sort of. Maybe a little bit.  “I think I’ll just go ahead and play the song once through before I start recording, no need to be an ass about it,” I mumble the last part of my sentence, and Connie pretends that he doesn’t hear me say it. I know you’re not deaf, Con man. Accept it. You can be an ass, and I’m right. I look down at my guitar, and let fingers use their muscle memory to form the first chord on the fretboard. 

I play the first part of the song, and almost cringe at it.It really isn’t a song that should probably be played on the acoustic guitar. Eh, whatever. It can be called a… creative spin on it. Yeah. That sounds almost intelligent. Like someone could believe it if they didn’t think about it too hard. That is the secret to most things in life, you know. They more you  _ don’t  _ think about them, the more logical they suddenly become. It’s a philosophical thing that was proven, I swear. Maybe Jean philosophy. I think I like the sound of that. 

Though it’s just on the acoustic guitar, by the time I’m about halfway through the song I think it actually sounds pretty cool. I mean, not to toot my own horn or ring my own bell or whatever the saying is, but this version of the song isn’t turning out too bad. Even a fake fan of mindless self indulgence like me could appreciate it. I think I did this with my last upload, but I seem to really like complimenting myself. I mean, if a compliment is due, who am I to deny it, am I right? 

I realise that Connie is watching me still though when I get to the end of the song. He’s raising his eyebrows at me, and I hope that means that he thinks that I sound good too. He’s silent, mouth going agape gradually over a few seconds, before he says, “You close your eyes a lot when you sing. Almost like you actually can’t sing with your eyes open.” I glare at him. Thanks, Connie. “It sounded really good though,” he adds, almost like it’s nothing more than an afterthought. He’s a dick, but I love him. 

“So…” I start, only letting myself trail off a little bit, “do you think I’m ready to do the video?” I ask the question judging his face carefully. Sure, I’ve been complimented by my friends a lot in the past few amount of hours, but that doesn’t mean I’m still… not insecure about all of this stuff. It’s been moving really fast, okay? And this insecurity stuff is kinda deeply rooted inside of me. Like, really deeply rooted. It’s a surprise I was even able to get past it to the point of uploading one video in the first place. It was in a moment that according to all odds, shouldn’t have happened. 

But it did, and I uploaded that video, and here I am. Holding a guitar, fingers tracing over strings more gently than the stars calling out to the earth, wearing an alien tank top and looking like horse, according to all my friends. With Connie right in front of me, judging me over the fact that I close my eyes a lot when I sing. Telling me that despite that I did well. 

“Yeah, definitely!” Connie says to me. “But you’re shaking a little bit, so I’m going to go upstairs and get some food or something while you knock yourself out with this, yeah?” I blink. Before I can tell him it’s really fine, I just shake sometimes, he’s out of my room with a tiny wink and a look on his face like he’s… proud of me? What? I think sometimes I underestimate how good of a friend Connie is sometimes. I mean, I can’t say for sure that some other person would realise I was uncomfortable and then willingly move without me having to ask. I don’t even know if Sasha would for sure, though she probably would. Damn. 

“Thanks,” I let myself whisper out loud, knowing that not a soul will hear me. Not a single living soul. I let my fingers slide on the soft yet not instrument. I look up at my phone, where I’m recording my video. My face looks a little pale, and you can only see the alien ship on the tank top, not any of the cheesy words. Oh, that kind of makes me feel better about filming like this. I mean, I joke about myself all the time, and I sort of was joking with Connie about the shirt, but I think I really would be bothered about filming a mindless self indulgence cover in this tank top. I mean, it’s only mindless self indulgence, but… I don’t know. 

Before I press the little button to start the video, I take a deep breath. I should really try not to mess this up. I mean, doing it all in one take would make me feel pretty good about myself, which I kind of need regarding my singing. I let that one deep breath echo throughout my body, trying my hardest to relax. Then, I lean forward and press the record button. 

 

\-----

 

In the end it takes me about ten takes to get the video right. The first video I take I end up singing all of ti right until I get to the second chorus, where my mouth malfunctions and I say something that definitely isn’t the lyrics of the song. Then I say more things that definitely aren’t the lyrics of the song because I curse myself out for making such a dumb mistake. I take another deep breath. 

The second take of the song is over in about fifteen seconds total (which really is great for my self esteem by the way). It’s because I think my voice isn’t scratchy enough, and then I just straight up forget to sing and stop in the middle of a phrase.  _ In the middle of a phrase.  _ In case anyone was wondering about it, I curse myself out for that mistake as well. 

Then, in my third take, I mess up in the first two second of the song because my fingers malfunction and play something very, very wrong. That’s a little bit more forgivable, so I don’t even curse myself out much. It isn’t forgivable as much when I do the same thing in the fourth take, though, and I’m almost completely done with the song with what would have been a perfect take. I actually want to go and death myself at that point.

Fifth take was perfect. I’m not even really exaggerating. It sounded so good. Up until Connie walked in at the end and dropped something accidentally, and made me not only stop but also made a huge ass booming sound that ruined the entire video. “Get out, oh my god!” I yelled at him. He looked really panicked, and dashed out of my room like he had hellfire chasing him.

“ _ Frick,”  _ I heard him half mutter and half shriek in response to my yelling. That became pretty funny to me after the whole ordeal was over, but while I was trying to film I wanted to actually go and death him now, and not go and death myself. I mean, there are the pros and cons of everything, and I guess that the pro to Con (I’m hilarious, laugh at that pun please okay Connie didn’t laugh at it) is that now I don’t want to kill myself as much because the rage is directed at him. -

The sixth take is kind of like the third take, except I sing a wrong word in the very first bit, and just stop and stare at the camera like I want to honestly go and run out into traffic. Why was it being so difficult for me to record it? I had played this ogn many times before, and played it perfectly fine during that little warm up thing. Well, I was definitely warmed up at that point. I had warmed up at least six times or so, and I was done warming up. I wanted to be done. 

The seventh take was… fine, I guess. I mean, I didn’t mess up all the way through it. It was okay. But when I listened to it after I took it, I just sounded… I don’t know. Uninterested? Sub par? Not as good as I think I could be? I mean, I suppose when you have like two subscribers other than people who are probably only subscribed because you’re their friend, you don’t really have to set your standards high. Still, I just felt like I could do better, and I expected better from myself. Let’s keep it clear though, it wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t the level I thought I could do, and I wasn’t willing to settle for just okay, I suppose. I sound like such a perfectionist when I say things like that, but it’s true. I know I could do better than what I did, so if I settled for that okay then it would be even more mediocre than I already think (know) I am. So yeah, I deleted it. Connie was mad at me sort of for deleting a perfectly okay take, but I wasn’t willing to let myself take the easy way out. 

The eighth take was another one that was ruined by Connie, because I got about halfway through the song when I opened my eyes (because yes, okay, I close my eyes a lot when I sing and so what if I do that it’s a perfectly respectable thing to do and anyone who thinks otherwise can leave me the fuck alone) and I saw that Connie has snuck in and started making faces at the camera. He wanted me to keep the take even though I stopped midway through the song. I yelled at him to get out once again. 

Then, the ninth take was the one where I got about three seconds into it and started laughing because Connie had been caught on camera running out of my room with the eighth take and I had just remembered it. What a fuckign doofus. Him and all his fear, yelling, “ _ frick!”  _ again because he knew that it had made me laugh really hard the first time he had done it. It wasn’t too bad to lose the ninth take, it only lasted long enough to catch me laughing at Connie. Con man and all the stupid things that he does.

Finally, during  the tenth take, I let myself just forget that Connie is ever at my house. I smile the tiniest bit at the camera before I start, and then I just let my voice get as scratchy as it needs to, or as loud as it needs to. It’s actually… really fun, if I’m going to be honest. By the time that I get to the end of the song though, I realise I’ve closed my eyes a lot throughout the video. Whatever. If anyone actually cares then they suck as much as Connie does, and I don’t think that’s even possible. 

When I’m completely done with the tenth take, I open my eyes and let myself smile and laugh the tiniest bit before reaching up and turning off the video. Connie then springs up out of  _ fucking nowhere  _ saying, “that last bit was so pure! Oh my god! #jeanissowholesome! If that lil’ smile doesn’t catch the eye of some cute girl out there then I’ll be damned.” I glare at him. 

“Where. The fuck. Did you just come from?” I ask him, setting my guitar back where it was and then crossing my arms over my chest. What a fucking weirdo. Connie doesn’t seem to care about how much of a loser I think that he is, because he just walks right past me to where my computer is on my dresser, ranting about how he’s definitely making that smile the thumbnail for my video if it’s the last thing he does. I just roll my eyes. I mean, with him sometimes you just have to accept you just aren’t going to win. It’s like with Eren sometimes, when in mornings he’ll make me write haikus or pull shit like that. I have some of the weirdest friends. 

It’s nice.

 

\-----

 

“This new project requires you to be creative,” my english teacher says, sounding the mst bored that I have ever heard someone sound while saying the word ‘creative.’ I’m only halfway paying attention, because every thirty seconds or so Connie will pass me an entertaining doodle of our english teacher, and to be honest the doodles are far more interesting than she is. No offense (not really). I mean, if she seemed to try at all to make her lessons not make me want to die then maybe I would care more about her class a bit more. 

Connie passes me an entertaining doodle of her saying the word ‘creative’ while looking more dead inside than I think any other doodle I’ve ever seen has. He’s kind of impressive with his skill a drawing. I mean, with only a few lines that look like scribbles when separate but an entire scene when together, and they are actually really expressive. How he does it I don’t know. I would bring up that I can’t draw a stick figure, but I’ve heard from some of my really artsy friends that that is one of the more annoying things to hear.

“For this project, you are going to be writing poetry of some sort, and sharing it with the class. Now, because this is just a regular class and you’re seniors, I decided to take it easy on you. All you really have to to do is follow the rubric, show basic understanding of rhyming and how to create poetry, and share it with the class. You could… I don’t know, write a rap, a parody, a song, or just a regular old poem. It isn’t supposed to be hard, so please don’t make it hard, yes?” Huh. That’s… rather interesting. 

I mean, usually I would be expecting the same old drab project from her. All year so far sh hasn’t been exactly the most exciting person to be a student to. I don’t know if I’m particularly excited to share anything in front of the class, but … I could maybe see a reaction from a live audience to my song. Though that’s a really scary idea, I mentioned that I’m pretty insecure about my music, but it could also be interesting. Sometimes the most intimidating things in life are the things we should be conquering above anything else. 

Connie turns to me, a little bit of excitement on his face. “Dude, should we do a rap battle?” he asks me, and I feel something inside of me sink a little bit. I mean, I kind of wanted to do y song for the project, I wouldn’t have to really write anything new, but if Connie wants to work together then I can forget that really easily. Bros before hoes, hoes being my music in this case, I guess. I’m about to reply when our teacher speaks.

“Oh, no partners though. I don’t care how much you need your friends, for this I want to just see your pure genius, no help from others. It’s always interesting what people can come up with when they are on their own, and believe me when I say that even though this is not an honours english class I still expect great things from each and every,” her eyes hover on me as she says this, “one of you.” I nod.

“Sorry con man,” I whisper back to him. He shrugs, looking not too disappointed, which is most definitely a good thing. I wouldn’t know how to help if he was let down. 

“Eh, it’s cool. I think I can do a parody of all - star that will rock this world.” I snort at that under my breath, really hoping that my teacher can’t hear us talking when she’s telling us about this new project. “What do you think you’re going to do for this project?” Connie asks me, a slight glow in his eyes. I swear, he always seems so fucking  _ excited  _ about everything. It’s a little bit intimidating, if I’m being honest. Like I’d disappoint him if I don’t display the same zeal for life in every one of my actions. 

I look for a second up at our english teacher before responding to him. “I was thinking… maybe I’m going to perform my song? It might be interesting to see the reaction it gets from a real audience. And if I don’t get and A for writing a complete song then that would surprise me. I mean, it has guitar and everything, what’s not to love?” I hear a tiny snort, but it’s not from Connie.

He stops with his mouth open, like he was about to respond, and looks over my shoulder at the girl next to me. Hitch. Was it her… who snorted at what I said? I turn around carefully, trying not to attract the attention of my english teacher, and look at her. She’s got her eyebrows raised at me. Oh god. I get mean vibes from her, and I really don’t want to get an ego hooping from her today. She can be brutal, I’ve seen it. She’s this special kind of stupid/smart cocky, where she can laugh at you like a complete ditz once second and then tear you down with some of the most carefully crafted words you’ve ever heard the next. 

“You better be as good at music as you seem to be saying, horse - man, or you’re going to get ripped apart when you go to present,” she tells me, a sly smirk embracing her red lips. You know what, I don’t even care that much that she just insulted how good I am at music (I’m just lying, I honestly am so insecure about and I need more validation), what I want to know is why sh thought she’s allowed to call me horse man. Excuse you, Hitch, but only my friends can call me that, which you are not one of them, and I don’t even like it when they call me variations of that. So Hitch most definitely can’t call me that. No. 

“Don’t call me that,” I tell her, whispering and trying to sound as unamused as I can. Just don’t make it funny for her, and maybe she’ll stop. I really don’t like people calling me horse face, it’s annoying. And if I’m honest? Hitch can be annoying enough as is, she doesn’t need to negatively help herself even more in my book. Okay, maybe I’m a little biased, but she called me horse man. 

“The project,” my english teacher says in a voice that is very much pointedly louder than before, so I feel like she definitely knows that I was talking with Connie while she was talking pretty much the entire time she was describing the project. Well damn. There goes being subtle. “Is due in two weeks time. That should be plenty long enough to come up with something at least halfway decent. Okay?”

There’s a chorus of responses and agreements, and then she lets us use the rest of the hour to start working on our project. Connie talks to me a little bit louder than necessary for me to hear him about how he thinks what I’m going to do is a really cool idea and anyone who doesn’t should go and fuck themself. I know he’s doing it so that Hitch can hear, and though I’m a little bit embarrassed I appreciate it. Embarrassed because there’s definitely some people other than Hitch who heard, but appreciative because Hitch stays way quieter towards me for the rest of the class period. 

I’ll prove myself to her. I don’t need to, but I will. I’ll prove myself to all of them.

 

\-----

 

Though I know I wanted to do the whole dramatic Eren - esque thing and prove myself to everyone and anyone who I can, it’s thursday afternoon and I haven’t exactly been working really hard on the project. I mean, I did choose the idea of just performing my song that I already have written for a live audience so that I don’t really have to do any work for this project, but I had a low key idea in my head that I could improve my song a little bit before I perform it for my whole english class. 

Connie’s been writing a truly outstanding parody of ll star. It has to do with rights of minorities and how homework is often just busywork all in one. I think some of it even mentions volunteering to build stoves in a third world country. I don’t know, but it’s fairly interesting to listen to. I forget the exact way it goes every time he stops singing it, but it’s hilarious when he’s getting into it like he is now, on the top of one of the spheres in Amsterdam, serenading Sasha, Eren, and I. 

Now, the fact that Eren is here is fairly interesting all in itself, outside of the whole hilarity that is Connie’s song for the english project. During seventh hour I got a text from Connie that him and Sash were thinking about going to Amsterdam, and I said that sounded pretty cool so we should do it. Then Connie texted me about five minutes later saying that Eren was coming too. I don’t have anything particularly against Eren, but I was nonetheless surprised to hear he was coming to Amsterdam with us. I also got a text from Mikasa that she had a ride home from Annie.

That is curious enough as it is. Usually even if Annie was willing to give Mikasa a ride, Mikasa would choose to be driven home by me with Eren. Despite the big fat lesbian crush she has on that scary blonde, I think she would choose my ride to her house just because she doesn’t trust me to not drag him off to Amsterdam (more like let him convince me to drag him off to Amsterdam) and give him a cigarette. I mean, he’s old enough to make his own choices, and in my book she’s a bit overprotective, so she’s not wrong in thinking that I would let him do what he wants to do. If what he wants to do is smoke a cigarette, then I’d let him smoke a cigarette. It’s his body, not mine, and he’s old enough to know the consequences.

When he hopped into the passenger seat and Connie and Sasha went ahead and sat next to each other in the back seat (more like started making out in the back seat because that’s what they do pretty much any time that they think they can get away with it and half of the times that they think they can’t) I raised my eyebrows at him for a second. Eh just frowned for a moment, looked down, and then looked up at me, almost daring me to mention it. Well, he did dare me. “What’s Mikasa think about you coming to Amsterdam?” I asked him, knowing that we all knew perfectly well her thoughts on him coming to Amsterdam with all of us. 

“You know what, Jean?” he replied to me in a question, and I waited for him to follow it up with the answer. “I don’t give an Amster _ damn.”  _ He waiedt a second, and I laughed at him for even going ahead and making that awful, awful joke. Why am I friends with the people that I’m friends with? Is this what I signed up for? Bad jokes and them making out in the backseat?

“Did you really just make that joke?” I asked him, almost genuinely laughing at the joke because I like bad jokes and they kind of make my sad high school teenager life worth living a little bit. He laughed at himself and his own joke too, and just nodded in response to me question. “Okay then,” I replied, knowing he knew that was what I was saying to both of the questions I had asked him. It’s like with the whole smoking thing. He’s old enough to know the consequences of messing with Mikasa. He knows what’s going to happen if she comes to find him with us. He knows perfectly well what she thinks of our little outings at the sculpture park, and him choosing to somewhat not address it and choosing to not give a damn about what she thinks is utterly on him. Eren is a big boy, and he can make his choices. 

When we arrived at Amsterdam Connie and Sasha right away ran away to those big spheres that we go to first off whenever we come here, it’s almost a tradition. As I got out of my car though, I made sure to take my time to see how Eren was reacting to all of this. He’s come with us to Amsterdam a few times, and even sometimes we’ve come here on our own. It’s been a little while though, since the last time he came here. He’s been better about not stepping on Mikasa’s toes so far senior year, though I have the oddest feeling that’s changing that.

He stepped out of the passenger side of my car with this look on my face I couldn’t exactly describe easily. Almost like he has a lot of weight on his chest, and almost like he really wants to go and run right after Sasha and Connie. Eren closed his eyes, just let them flutter closed, and breathed in a deep breath of fresh sculpture park air. And then exhaled. “It’s nice to be back, isn’t it?” I asked him with a slight smile crawling up the side of my mouth a little bit. 

Eren turned to me with an almost matching little smirk decorating his lips. The look on his face is almost something that I could describe as relief, but it could also be exhaustion. At this point, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see. The smile grows a little bit before he replies with, “You have no idea, Mr. Horse Man.” I frown at that. I did something nice for him. Why are my friends so cruel? I mean, really though, what did I do to deserve them deciding it’s funny to compare me to a horse?

“Why?” I throw my hand up into the air, but then let a smile come across my lips again. You know what? Eren hasn’t been here in a little while. He’s got a new boyfriend, or new boy - toy at least. I’m just going to let him be for today, as I sort of treat. Because I’m that good of a friend. Honestly though, I should win an award for all this. Patience? I got it. Good looks? I got it. A car? I got it. Great sense of humour? Got it.  I’m the complete package for a best friend.  

That leads us to where we are now. Perched atop those giant metal spheres that make the weird metal snake trailing through the woods on the park, Connie singing his song about minorities and volunteering in third world countries and shit all to the tune of all star by smash mouth while we puff out smoke along with our laughter. Honestly, Connie, what a guy. Not just anyone can write a song that deep to the tune of all star. Just the people who are increible…ly full of bullshit that is. I mean, the message isn’t bad, but it’s ridiculous. 

Eren tilts his head back to laugh loud and clear into the empty sky above us at almost every other line that Connie spits out with his mad enthusiasm. I can’t help but think that this is a good idea. Sure, I really don’t have the time to be here at Amsterdam and also get all my homework done tonight and get to bed at a good time, and I still haven’t improved my song, but I’m really okay with that right now with how it feels to be surrounded by my friends. It’s really fucking nice, you know it?

For some reason, I feel my thoughts drifting to Marco. Marco Bodt, and his really nice face. Maybe it’s because this moment, with my friends and feeling like I’m simultaneously far too small to find in the universe and also big enough to swallow all of the heavens whole, I feel like I mean something and like this moment means something. His videos generally make me feel something. That kind of reminds me of that one quote, the one about art. How it isn’t necessarily supposed to be beautiful, it’s simply supposed to make you feel something. He makes me feel something. Does that make Marco Bodt art? I think that might just be the nicotine rush. I know it’s just a cigarette and not weed, because I’m smoking some of my own stash today. Sometimes Connie will give me weed when I don’t give him a preference of what I prefer. It’s kind of nice, if I’m going to be honest. He won’t even make me pay him, but then again I don’t make him pay me for all the rides I give him all of the time, so maybe we’re even. Also we’re friends, so there’s that too. 

How did I go from thinking about Maco to thinking about weed? What the fuck? I don’t know, weed is pretty nice and so is Marco, so maybe there’s a connection. I think sometimes that it might be kind of weird how much I look up to Marco, but maybe that’s just because he’s successful doing the thing that he loves. I’m a bit too lazy right now to really ponder it. It doesn’t have to mean anything if I don’t want. So it doesn’t. Not that there’s anything it could be if I did want it to be something. 

I think it’s kind of cool that now I could be considered a YouTuber, and so is Marco. I mean, I didn’t do it for him, no I’m not that pathetic, but having that tie between us feels kind of nice, I suppose. I don’t know, it’s an odd sort of feeling. I’m probably not in the right state of mind to even be thinking about shit like that right now anyway. I mean, I’m not homophobic at all, but I’m a little bit wary of days where my brain feels like it is, and I think I’m a little bit too busy right now to be questioning my sexuality over a boy I’ve only ever seen through a screen of some sort. 

Though I’ve always identified as pretty straight throughout my life, I did question it a bit when I was in like seventh grade or something along those lines. I decided, after asking myself if I found who I considered to be the most smooth guy in our year to be attractive and finding that the answer was no, that I was pretty much just your average heterosexual dude. So I’d say that I’m pretty sure I’m straight.

Now, I’m not going to completely say that I’m never going to like a dude. I mean, there’s always a chance that I might meet a guy at some point and think that I could spend the rest of my life with him, but honestly that moment has never happened before and I just don’t see it happening in my future. Once Ymir and I had a conversation about how really it’s unfair, because women are beautiful creatures and we both can’t understand how anyone could not be attracted to them. Women are so soft, and can be cold intelligent one second and think so out of the box, and be so fuckign strong - sorry, I’m ranting. I just really like women. They’re incredible. So yes, while at some point in my life maybe I will eventually identify as a little bit gay, but I could never I think all the way. I’d have to be bi or pan or something, because women are just too beautiful and I am most definitely attracted to them. The day that I am no longer attracted to women is the day that they nail the last nail into my coffin and bury me.

“Yo Jean, you okay?” Eren asks me. He’s sitting next to me on this metal sphere, and I look over at him. His eyes are wide, and greener than I’ve seen in a long time. That’s good, he needs more fun in his life what with his whole family situation and all. Hey, he’s sort of gay. Maybe I should ask him about it. He’s dating (?) a guy too, so he should be pretty knowledgable on the subject of being a dude and liking other dudes, whether that attraction might be romantic or sexual. Doesn’t matter to me, not really. 

“Eh, I’m pretty okay. Low key questioning m sxuality, btu not really all that much.” Eren’s eyes widen at that. If he takes that as me saying that I’m gay then I’m going to kill him. Because I’m really not, gay that is. If he thinks that this is a sign that he can push me into cutesy little double dates with his new boyfriend, then I’m going to knock him upside the head. Sure. Levi might kill me after Mikasa does, but it’ll be worth it.

Then he scoots away really dramatically, covering his chest with one hand like he’s a sissy who’s about to faint. What a fucking weirdo.”Jean! I know that I’m attractive, but you should know that I’m a taken man now. You can’t just flirt with me, that’s so scandalous!” I stop and stare at hi for a moment, because it’s honestly a little bit creepy how much he was totally just channeling Connie right there. Also the fact that he even went there is a little bit surprising, and annoying enough that I can pretend to be annoyed at him for thinking that that was a funny joke. Two bad jokes already, damn. 

“Fuck you, Eren,” I laugh it off, almost shoving him right off the sphere. I love the man, but he’s a straight up dick. Like, what the heck Eren, stop being rude to me. He just laughs hard though, and then chokes for a second on the smoke he’s been inhaling into his lung. It’s a little bit funny how much I fear death and yet how much I enjoy the little taunt of it in the glow at the end of each of my cigarettes. Woah, maybe I’m getting just a little bit too deep there. Calm down, Jean. 

He steadies himself on the sphere, so that he won’t just slip off, and then laughs a little bit more when he’s finishes coughing a little bit. You know, I believe in him making his own choices, but I’m kind of glad he doesn’c come to Amsterdam with us as much to smoke. I love him and his family to death, don’t get me wrong, but he wants to do things with the military when he’s older. He can’t pursue that dream and smoke the same amount that Sasha, Con man and I do. It wouldn’t work out for him. 

“Hey man, if we’re being serious though,” he adds in a lower pitch, softer tone, “if you ever really need to talk to someone about all that shit then just hit me up. I can be an idiot, but I’m pretty smart about that kind of stuff if I do say so myself.” He nods at his own words, an I nod back at him. There’s a moment of odd tension, and then we simultaneously start laughing. “Okay,” he says, “that’s enough of that. I want to climb the red sculpture!” So we laugh and let him drag us off the the sculpture that never fails to remind me a little bit of clifford the big red dog. I mean, come on. It’s easy to see why. 

The light in Eren’s eyes is a new sort of spark, and it leads us on a whole load of adventures we’ve all had several times over. I guess that’s one of the things that I find the most beautiful about this sculpture park. Nothing here is new, other than the odd sculpture or two over the years that gets added to the park. I know all the secrets of this place, and it’s so saturated in memories that by walking anywhere I’m practically drowning in my own past, in my own experiences with people I love and I  _ have  _ loved. If not anything else, the feeling I get when I’m here is interesting to say the least.

In my own opinion, it’s pretty easy to love another person. Lots of people say differently, but really it’s not all that hard. A person can verbally communicate usually, they can interact with you on a surface level that we all seem to crave. it’s harder to love a place. In a place, like this park for example, it communicates through a different wavelength, if you will. You have to try and understand on a whole new level. You have to give more than a little bit of yourself to the place to get even anything back in return, and you have to listen to the way that the wavelength speaks to you. If you let it just go through, then you can only communicate through that surface level.you have to let it completely take you to love a place, have to let it have you, and then watch patiently as it gives back. 

Woah there. I thought I already addressed that I need to be edging away from deeper thoughts. I’m pretty sure I have a math test coming up, I should probably be thinking about that instead. It’s kind of crazy how this place does that to me. One second I’m just existing as normally scheduled, and then out of nowhere I’m thinking something that could only be described as profound. Well. I mean, if other people don’t find my thoughts profound then I guess that’s that, but I find it profound and that’s what I care about anyways. Other people? Pfft.

On the red sculpture, we perform our own little weird things. I don’t even know how it started, but Eren decides to sing his own carefully worded rendition of ‘my heart will go on’ which makes my day. Connie decides, to honour his parody, to sing for us the actual all star. Feeling left out, Sasha and I decided to sing a duet of ‘wanna be’ by the Spice girls It’s a bit not really my style and all, but it was absolutely hilarious with her, and by the end I was a worried we were going to fall off.

Eren was laughing his ass off, and then started coughing again. That kind of worries me. I know that I’m not his mom, just like Mikasa isn’t his mom, but I’m allowed to be worried for him. That’s a little bit hypocritical, saying as I smoke far more than him much more frequently than he does, but maybe that’s the point. He’s not really used to smoking this much. He has a future. I’m not going to mention it, I think, but I know that it’s going to bug me for a while. I just… I don’t even really know. 

“Yo Jaeger, are you okay?” I ask, not letting myself become too serious. Sasha is still laughing, so that’s good. I don’t think he wants that much attention being drawn to him coughing. Even among us, some of his closest friends, he feels the need to pretend he’s much tougher than he is.  _ Eren,  _ I kind of want to shake his shoulders and tell him,  _ it’s okay. We see right through you. We know you’re kind of a pussy and we’re friends with you anyway.  _ Btu I know he would take that really offensively. And he isn’t even that much of a pussy. Something that I’ve always struggled with handling is his blind, borderline suicidal bravery. 

“I’m fine, horse face, you can calm down,” he tells me, trying to laugh it off. I can tell he’s forcing himself not to cough though. What a fucking idiot, god. If he needs to cough then maybe he should just let himself fucking cough. Ugh. I slide down the red tube to ste ext to him, and I pat him on the back a few times despite him glaring at me for that. I don’t fuckign care how much you glare, Eren, I’m not an idiot and you shouldn’t be smoking this much when you aren’t used to it. Especially not with the career you want to pursue. But I remember that I’m not his mom, just like Mikasa isn’t, and I back off. Like I said before, Eren is a big boy. He can make his own choices and he’ll face the consequences that come with them. He isn’t as stupid as he seems, and he knows the risks, just like Connie does, just like Sasha does, just like I do. We all know what we could be potentially signing up for.

“Okay,” I reply to him, not willing to push it. Because I understand, and he understands. We aren’t just blind idiots running around a sculpture park and smoking away our future unknowingly. When people assume that we are, maybe that’s the most annoying. Because Connie isn’t just someone who acts crazy sometimes, he likes earl grey tea in the morning and has about five tea pots that he gets from various exotic places. He’s a vegetarian. He says that he isn’t going to pretend he wants to quit, but he knows he should.

Sasha loves food, and she loves smoking, and she doesn’t even care that people judge her for it. Her fucking aunt borrows money from  _ her,  _ and is about to move maybe a country away with her third husband, who also is far from having his life together. Sasha doesn’t give a shit about her future all that much, not when she knows that most people just go through the motions like her aunt and end up feeling broken up inside whether they risk things for a pretty little flame on the end of a cigarette or not. She wants to move to a third world country and help people one day, because that’s all she can see herself doing with her life, though Eren might end up convincing her to join the marines with him.  She’s definitely in good enough shape physically to do that.

And then Eren has a whole fucke up backstory. He’s not even addicted to smoking, but I think he wants to just so that he can do  _ something  _ he knows will make people disapprove of him, something that he can control. Because he can’t control people looking down at him for his dad leaving them high and dry. He can’t control how people look down on him for wanting to be in the military. He can’t control people looking down on him for his sexuality. But a cigarette? He can control that, and flip people off for something that’s his own choice feeling like he has his life in his own hands. Is that a fucked up mentality? Maybe. I’m not in a place to judge him.

I don’t even know why I really started smoking. Was it to feel that little thrill of danger every time I light up? to know that my parents would definitely not approve of it? To have some aspect of my life, as much as I was throwing it away by smoking, in my own control? I’m not really sure anymore. Maybe I just do it now out of pure habit. It’s just the way it goes. Amsterdam, goes with smoking, and I can’t even remember that much of a time when it didn’t. Besides, I’ve always been one to enjoy how pretty the smoke twirling off the end of my cigarette looks like silver ribbon against the backdrop of the sky. Will I quit smoking? I don’t know for sure. I haven’t thought that far.

“Guys, let’s go up to the new black water!” Sasha exclaims, already starting to run up there. I shake my head, laughing a little bit, and follow her. I’m really not all that fit, but I’m pretty close to Sasha, so it isn’t too hard to follow her. Eren is stupidly fit, which makes sense because of the whole marines thing he wants to do, but it still feels crazy to watch him just fucking bolt up there, not even knowing where the black water is because he hasn’t come here since they’ve gotten it put in here. 

The water isn’t actually black, it’s dyed water that’s this really, really dark blue. When we first saw it though, surrounding this statue of a woman who looked way too stuck up for her own good, Connie had thought the water was black. He was a little bit high (just a little bit, don’t go crazy) so it’s kind of excusable I guess. Now even though we know it’s just really dark blue we still call it black water. Whether that be because we’re mean friends or sentimental friends, I’m not sure. I’m a bit biased to the latter of the two.

When we (Connie and I) get up there, Sasha and Eren are already sitting net to the water, biting their lips out of excitement and all that shit while dipping fingers and then hands into the water. It’s actually pretty cool to see your hand go in and the water be really dark around it, I’ll admit,but these two are acting like little easily excited puppies over it. Which is fine, because my friends are great and I love them, but also it’s water guys. No need to lose your shit over it, I promise it’s just dyed water. 

I let my hand go into it, and the water is really fucking cold. Like, holy shit my hand is freezing. I grin and try to see if my hand can touch the bottom of the miniature pand surrounding the statue anyway. I know it’s illogical to even try, because if you just read the sign it says that the pool is six feet deep and I know for a fact my arm isn’t six feet long, but it’s fun. What can I say? I’m a stupid teenager. 

Eren grabs a stick that looks like it might be around seven feet long. “Think I can touch the bottom with this twig?” He asks. I kind of want to tell him that it’s not a twig because twigs are way smaller than that, but I let him be. You know what, he’s having fun, I’m not even going to mess with him over it. What the fuck ever, you feel? Connie tells him that the stick should reach, and even though it’s just a stick in water, Sasha pulls out her phone and records Eren’s face as he sticks it into the dyed water. He looks a little bit really stupid. 

It’s okay. We all look a little bit really stupid sometimes. Whatever. Hakuna matata and all that treehugger shit. Doesn’t even matter. I’ve been trying harder to not let myself get mad over stuff that doesn’t even warrant it. It wouldn’t even make sense to get mad over Eren just being a teenager and being amazed over water that’s darker than normal. It’s just Eren being Eren. Still, there was a time for me that it was really hard not to be that way. I’ve gotten better over time though. Here’s to me and all. What a stand up citizen.

After Eren and all of us are done with the water (eventually we convinced Sasha to stick her entire leg into the water and now she’s itching it because apparently water makes her legs itch?) we decide to walk on one of the paths in the woods. They go to several different places, the paths inside of the woods, and depending on which way we choose we could come back out in a matter of minutes or in a matter of hours. It’s kind of exciting, really. Kind of not, because what if we get lost, but kind of thrilling. 

First we decide to go right. We’re walking on the paths that sometimes are a mix of gravel and wood chips and sometimes are just worn down earth, and at the first fork in the road Connie and Sasha in unison just yelled, “right!” I whispered to Eren that they totally planned that, btu we went right, just like they wanted. Sometimes they come up here just the two of them to be gross and in love and stuff and they probably are planning on leading us to one of their favorite spots. 

While we’re walking down the path was somehow seamlessly fall into a sort of pattern. Sasha and Connie are walking behind Eren and I, holding hands and leaning up against each together while walking every once in awhile. Then, in front of them, Eren and I walk next to each other. I think I really like the way his eyes keep lighting up as he keeps seeing new nature things around him. He doesn’t come here often enough with us. He doesn’t get out just for the fun of it enough. Not anymore. His dad leaving had such a hard impact on his family, and both his and Mikasa’s social life had to pay for it. 

I’ve been taking several aesthetic pictures today with Eren though. Maybe I’ll post one of two of them on instagram later today, I don’t know. The only times I really post on my instagram are when I paint something (so very rarely) and when Connie and Sasha hack my account so that they can embarrass me. Usually I delete what they post on there, but sometimes I leave it up there just to fuck with the people that follow me. I feel like Eren (who follows my one account with all three of his) would like it if I posted something about him. Maybe I’ll do that. He can be annoying a lot, yeah, but I love him to death and he’s been struggling too much lately.

Now, not in the boyfriend department. I wish he would just tell me about how the whole Eren and Levi thing happened. I had (no offense to Eren and all obviously) always thought that his weird little infatuation with Levi was not only one sided, but completely and utterly hopeless. I think everyone else thought that too. So how did that even work out? Levi must have been pretty good at hiding his feelings for Eren before they got together, because while he seemed pretty indifferent to Eren before he also seemed pretty damn into it when I caught them literally making out on my car. Like,  _ pretty  _ into it. 

I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket, and I know that someone texted me. I feel like it’s my mom though, so maybe I’ll just ignore it. The other day she kept pestering me about how when she came home on sunday she heard me screaming in the basement, was I okay? It’s kind of been annoying. I told her I was mad at Connie, because if I told her I was singing I feel like I would get hardcore judged. I’m really not into that, y’know? I’m more into the whole love and support and overwhelming validation from the people who call me horse face (my idiotic bully friends that I love), despite how much I really don’t look like a horse. I mean, not to get sidetracked here, but honestly I don’t resemble a horse. Honestly. I have a long face… I guess? I still don’t look like a horse, though. 

We keep walking through the forest, and Eren spots a squirrel and gets hella excited. “It’s just a fuckign squirrel, man,” I tell him nonchalantly, while also taking a video that Connie and Sasha can see of him chasing the squirrel around the trees surrounding the path. Oh yeah. This is most definitely going on my instagram. If Jaeger doesn’t like this with all three accounts then I’m going to hold a protest, because this is actually straight up gold. Ha, more like gay up gold, am I right? You know - because he’s not straight. I’m really fucking funny, okay? 

My phone vibrates again in my pocket, but again I ignore it. Honestly, I’m trying to have fun with Eren because he doesn’t get out enough anymore. Can the world stop trying to contact me? No one ever texts me anyway other than in the last five minutes, why can’t people text me when I’m not doing anything? Okay, that was a lie. I text Connie a lot. And Sasha. And Eren, as much as it sometimes makes my brain feel like it’s going to outright melt and pour out of my ears onto the ground. Actually - huh. I text my friends a lot. 

We come across a tree that’s fucking perfect for climbing. It’s this big ass pine tree that goes up really fucking high, and the layers of thick branches that it has are spaced out the right distance to making climbing it not really all that much work. We decide to all climb up it, and when we get about three fourths of the way up Eren starts going faster. Oh no, buddy. I can see what you’re doing. He wants to get to the thinner part before e so that he can win and be higher up in the end where it can’t hold more than one person. Well ha ha ha Eren Jaeger, I see right through you. I speed up my climbing as well. Connie and Sasha… don’t really care. They’re quoting memes to each other as they climb up, almost falling off the tree because they’re laughing. 

He totally notices me speeding up to get there faster than him, and just fucking grins at me before  _ bolting  _ up the tree like no one’s business. What the actual fuck, Jaeger. I wasn’t lying when I said that he’s fitter than m, because I could not climb up the tree that fast, no matter how fucking perfect it is for climbing, no matter how easy it is to get up fast. He just moved like a goddamn  _ monkey. _ How. that’s my question. Not even - I don’t know - if he’s been climbing trees every day since he was three or something, just how. Give me your powers, Jaeger, I’m jealous of you. Not really, because that would be admitting defeat and I would never even  _ dream  _ of that, but mildly yes I am. Mildly. No one can fault me for being just mildly jealous of Eren. 

While I’m climbing, my phone vibrates even more against my leg. It’s so annoying, honestly. I’m just trying to do my thing, to climb up the tree and beat Eren (no matter how far ahead of me he is I can still have hope), and my phone won’t stop buzzing. When I catch up to Eren it’s stopped though, after vibrating like four times, so I let myself forget about it. Whoever it is, they’re being so annoying that I’m just going to ignore them now. Probably not the best idea, if I’m going to be honest with myself, but when have I ever prided myself on being overly intelligent? I don’t really know the answer to that question myself, but you know what saying as I can’t remember it the number of times I’ve done that is probably really low anyways. 

I’m just going to go with that and hope that it all works out. Sure, I could be responsible and check my phone before starting up a conversation with Eren, but really I’m not all that good at being the responsible one of the bunch and it’s not even that fun either, so what’s it worth in the long run? Probably a lot but I don’t care. It doesn’t matter right now, and I’m not thinking the straightest so I’m going to push thoughts of it away.

“Hey man,” Eren greets me when I’m up beside him. The area that we’re at is about the thinnest that it can get while supporting two people, and I can appreciate the fact that he didn’t just scramble up to where I would have been way farther below him in the tree. Connis and Sash stopped about three layers below us, and they’re just kinda low key making out. It’s a little bit ridiculous, to be honest, how many times I’ll be hanging out with the two of them and then somehow I’m awkwardly there and wanting to get away while they just make out. 

“Yo,” I greet him, finding a spot on the thinner branches to sit next to him so that I don’t make the branches collapse underneath my weight. It’s happened to me before, where I’ve gone to sit on a branch and it kind of snapped underneath me, and it was some of the most terrifying shit to ever happen to me. Not an experience I would like to recreate any time soon, if ever. 

Eren coughs a little bit into his hand, avoiding my gaze, before turning back to look at me. “There aren’t many days like this that I get anymore,” he comments quietly, almost under his breath. Then he looks out from n between the branches, almost like he’s looking for an answer in the clouds hanging idly in the sky. I grimace. Ah, so this is where we’re at conversation wise. I knew it was bound to happen at some point today.

“And it’s a damn shame, Jaeger,” I tell him, not trying to sugar - coat my words too much. I know that both myself and Eren find it really annoying when people baby you like they’re afraid they’re going to hurt your feelings with the truth. Please. It’s insulting to act like somehow I can’t take it. Eren’s a big boy, like I’ve earlier stated, and so am I. We accept the consequences of our actions. We accept the truth for what it is, no matter how ugly and jarring it can be. We live like we’re running out of time simply because we are, when you look at it.

We endure. 

“Yeah,” he says, almost like it’s an echo. Almost like he’s sighing out with more sorrow than he’s used to letting show. Then again, he probably is. I don’t pretend to be the most empathetic person out there, or the most insightful or whatever it may be that caring people are pinned down as. But I can see basic hurt on a person’s face, basic pain in their voice and words. I can see that. And I see it clearly in Eren. I see it so clearly it’s like a big blue stain on an otherwise red canvas. And he’s so, so angry all the time. “I used to go to this one park with my dad a  _ lot  _ when I was a kid. Like, a fuck ton. And we’d climb trees together and he’d pretend to race me to the top and he’d always let me win.”

I don’t know if I should be saying anything to him, so I don’t. See, I can tell when someone’s hurting, but I’m not all that… good with people. The most I know to do to help someone through something that feels shitty is to hug them, and I feel like right now really isn’t the time or the place to be giving Eren a bear hug. Maybe I’m already helping him out, by giving him this day to just be a stupid teenager who does stupid shit because he’s young and he can and he feels like it. Sometimes, that’s the best thing you can let someone do. Just be the stupidest version of themselves, just because it feels good at the time. And if he ends up barfing in the car because he’s not used to smoking all that much, at least he’ll have the memory. Hopefully that’ll be enough.

“And he’d..” Eren pauses for so long that I think maybe he’ just trailed off, but then he speaks again into the soft, waiting air. “He’d tell me these silly short stories, you know? Stupid little things. But they made me laugh. They made me happy. He… he made me happy.” I don’t know what to say. Eren bites his lip, and then laughs a little bit, a bitter little chuckle under his breath. “And then, of course, he didn’t. There were so many times before he left that I wished he would just  _ go,  _ and when he finally did, well…” he almost trails off again, his eyes way too big and way too open when he’s looking out into the sky. He looks far too much like he’s looking for something, and I can almost say for certain what h’s looking for isn’t anywhere that he could ever find it, not this time. “I guess it’s just safe to say I didn’t expect this, is all,” he finishes, a little bit sad sounding. 

“That’s the way of the world though, isn’t it?” he asks with a forced kind of optimistic tone colouring his voice. He looks over at me, his eyes looking way too pained, and I’m not used to this. I’m used to angry Eren, or sarcastic Eren, or really really gay Eren, but not sad Eren. I can’t take sad Eren, I don’t know how to help him. I know I must look like a fucking deer caught in headlights with him looking at me like he expects to find that lost thing in me, but he’s never going to find it in me, can’t he see? “So it goes and all… all that hippy crap, you know?” he sounds more sad than ever, when he’s trying not to sound sad like this. 

“Eren,” I start, my voice somehow sounding impossibly soft in my own ears. He bites his lip again, looking like maybe he won’t be able to handle what I’m going to say next. “It’s… it’s okay.” Wow. That’s all I can choke out? I’m really not all that good at helping people through pain. He seems to take it okay though, and lets out another barkish bitter laugh under his breath, shaking his head at me.

“Nah, horse man, it really isn’t.” he says in between and through his sad bursts of laughter. “I mean it really,  _ really  _ isn’t. But thanks anyway. I know what you meant.” I sigh, grimacing at my own lack of tact and Eren’s blunt nature. Still, we work out. He’s a bit broken, so am I, but really who makes it out of this world without a few emotional breaks and bruises?

After a few minutes of just sitting next to each other on that tree layer of branches, Eren pulls out his phone. He’s got a fucking batman phone case, the guy does, I just can’t make this stuff up. It’s a sort of cool batman phone case though, so I can sort of respect it. He opens up the camera app on his phone, ignoring all the texts that I notice he’s gotten and not opened from Mikasa, and starts recording connie and sasha making out underneath us. I’m about to ask him what the hell he’s doing when he straight up yells, “CONNIE AND SASHA, SITTIN IN A TREE, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

Connie almost straight up topples from the branch he’s sitting on, and Sasha coughs into his mouth. They separate partially so that Sasha can yell in this voice shriller than usual about how Eren is shit.

“Eren  _ fucking  _ Jaeger, I’m gonna cut your dick off!” Sasha shrieks, and Eren just laughs from his perch in the tree next to me, chanting the last few lines of that little rhyme with mirth in his voice. Connie flips him off, and I just can’t seem to stop laughing. Sasha still doesn’t find it very funny. Then Eren straight up turns on me in my time of vulnerability.

He spins the camera around so that it’s recording footage of me and says, “THEN COMES JEAN THE HORSE PULLING THE BABY CARRIAGE!” I feel my smile fade, and I flip him off. Really. The horse joke. Again. Well wowie zowie, ain’t that funny. And original. I’m totally laughing my ass off here. He’s just cracking up, and stops recording after he gets another few shots of Connie struggling not to fall and Sasha mad. After about a minute or so of Sasha yelling at Eren and Connie yelling at both of us, they quiet down and there’s a moment of silence between all of us.

And then we’re all laughing together, and we’re climbing down the tree and falling into the grass and laughing with each other on the ground. Because we can, I guess. Because we’re young and stupid and we yell playground chants at each other from trees and somehow some of us are old enough to fall in love with each other. Because there will come a time when we can’t smoke and we can’t get together like this and in freshman year that time seemed so far away but now it’s creeping up faster than ever. Because I’m terrified of the future, but as long as I have all my friends to laugh with on the ground like we are now, I think I’ll be okay. 

 

\-----

 

When we’re walking out of the wooded area on a path that’s a weird mix between grass and pavement, I remember all those messages on Eren’s phone and link them in my head to mine. What if… oh my god, what if all the exts I’ve been getting have been from Mikasa and I’ve just been ignoring her? Holy fuck, I might just lose my dick if I don’t check my phone. I pull out my phone and turn it on while saying, “fuuuuck.” Oh lord have mercy.

Connie turns to me in the process of biting one of his lips and raises and eyebrow. “What you whining about, horse man?” I frown at that annoying nickname (seriously though, why is that still a thing? I hate it a lot, can’t they tell?), and turn my phone to face him. His teasing face goes slack, and his eyes widen. “You’re a dead man, Jean,” he tells me as if I don’t already know. “You have  _ eleven  _ texts from Mikasa. And I think I know why,” he adds, directed at Eren.

That idiot Eren has been walking with his arms folded behind his head, not really paying attention to my more increased breathing and the frantic sort of breathing I’ve sort of adopted. When Connie says that though, he turns over with only mild interest showing on his face. “Oh, she’s been texting you too? I thought it might just be me. I haven’t opened any of them though, she’s being clingy and I don’t want to mess with it today. Not… not today, you know?” I don’t know. Whatever he thinks I’m getting about this situation that isn’t obvious he’s wrong about, because I have no fucking clue what he means. 

“What?!” I exclaim. “Holy shit, she’s going to be so mad at me,” I say frantically, unlocking my phone (and taking about three times to get my passcode right because the fingerprint thing never works on my phone and my hands are low key sweaty right now) don’t judge). Eren hears what I have to say and looks at me with this unconcerned look on his face, and then shrugs.

“Probably,” he comments nonchalantly. Well  _ fuck  _ you too, Eren Jaeger. I open up the messages app and see that Mikasa is at the top. When I open it I’m expecting the worst, because that’s eleven messages over the course of the hours of time we’ve been here. I still can’t believe I’ve just been blowing her off this whole time. I don’t think she’ll be okay with it if I tell her I thought she was my mom either.  

**Mikasa :** Hey Jean, is Eren with you? I told him that I would be going home with Annie today, and I thought he would be here by now. Are you just taking a longer time than usual to drive him home?

 **Mikasa :** Jean? Jean come on can you reply to me it’s been five minutes

 **Mikasa :** also turn on your read receipts

 **Mikasa :** Jean this is getting really frustrating. Eren should be home by now and he isn’t, can you please tell me what’s going on?

 **Mikasa :** Okay, so I’m going to assume from Eren’s snapchat on his story that you guys are t Amsterdam, which I guess is fine and all, but can you make sure he doesn’t smoke? And tell him to come home soon, because we kind of got off on the wrong foot today on something and I need to talk to him about it and clear stuff up between us. Thanks Jean.

 **Mikasa :** It’s been a while, and I feel bad about spamming you with messages, but I’m getting worried. Also you let him smoke? Tell him if he wants to keep secrets from me he probably shouldn’t put a video of him smoking on his fucking snapchat story.

 **Mikasa :** You should know better than to let him smoke, Jean. He wants to be in the military for god’s sake! I thought you were better than this.

 **Mikasa :** Come on Jean, please just take him home. I know he’s been not able to hang out a lot recently, but I also know he has a lot of homework and he can’t afford to not do his homework. Also tell him to reply to me, I’ve texted him loads.

 **Mikasa :** JEAN PLEASE I’M GETTING REALLY FRUSTRATED HERE CAN YOU JUST HELP ME OUT?

 **Mikasa :** I’m sorry for being so crazy but Eren really needs to come home. Right now. I can’t tell if you’re reading any of this, but you really should reply to me if you are.

 **Mikasa :** Okay, I’m driving up to Amsterdam with Mrs. J’s car, you better have a dead phone or you’re a dead man for not answering me even once.

I kind of want to die, and I look over at Eren with what I know must be dread on my face. “Eren,” I say, trying not to make my tone too clipped, “check you goddamn phone.” He frowns, but pulls out his phone to look at all of Mikasa’s messages. Then he looks over at my phone, his face paling considerably. With just a glimpse at his phone I can tell I got the better side of Mikasa in this whole situation. Eren is going to actually die because of his sister. Cause of death : Mikasa Ackerman. Fucking hell. 

I look back down a ny phone. Forget Eren,  _ I’m  _ going to die because of his sister, holy fucking shit. Only a few people in this life truly scare me, one of them being Annie and one of them being Mikasa. There are a few others, but those two stand out in my mind. Annie and Mikasa, the scary duo. And they’re probably going to date soon… fuck, the world is going to burn. Or the opposite. But it’s going to be changed by them, mark my words. They’re a couple of badass bitches who aren’t really afraid to show it and don’t take shit from people. Though, granted he’s her brother, Mikasa takes a fuck ton of shit from Eren. Annie though? I don’t know if she’d take shit from him even if she’s dating his sister. 

Or soon to be dating his sister? They need to figure that out, god it’s confusing. Just date, we all know you like each other and we all know you’d be hella good together. Though, maybe Mikasa is afraid of offending me or something. We used to date, but that doesn’t mean I should have to okay all her experiences after me. Maybe I should tell her that if she’s holding back for me then that’s stupid and she should just go for it, like I don’t care other than wanting her to be happy. If she’s happy, healthy, and not in the process of killing me (and maybe not in the process of killing Eren too, on a good day) then I’m absolutely golden. There’s heavy emphasis on the not killing me part though, because her texts sound that’s something I need to start praying for real quick. And when I say real quick, I mean she’s walking towards us.  _ Fuck.  _

When I mean she’s walking towards us, I’m not talking any metaphorical bullshit. I mean she’s actually walking down the grass towards us, and we’ve all just stood still at the entrance to the woods on that stupid path. Sasha was reading the texts on Eren’s phone and cursing under her breath as she checked her own phone for messages from Mikasa when Mikasa shouted, “Eren.”

The strange thing is that she doesn’t even sound angry really, just a mixture of worried, frustrated, and overworked. I mean, if you look at it from her shoes she was just trying to see when her brother was going to get home and he was being a dick to her and not texting her back. Mikasa’s dad left her too, and she’s been struggling just as much as Eren. Not to mention this is the second time for Mikasa that she’s lost her father Today definitely couldn’t have been very fun for her. 

I look over to see what Eren’s face looks like, and I think that he knows just as well as everyone he’s a dead man. Well, I don’t know. I watch as his semi scared expression turns sort of angry.

What happened between them over the last, what, day? Days? Hours? Whatever amount of time it was, they seemed fine this morning in the car though, what happened within that period for Annie to give Mikasa a ride home, ERen to chainsmoke with us, and them to look like Mikasa is on the edge of beating his ass and crying and Eren looking like he wants to punch a wall?

I wish Eren would talk to me more. Not in a basic sort of just talking and hanging out with each other sort of way, in that case he needs to stop a little because he can get annoying hella fast. I mean that I want him to actually open up and communicate with me more. As ‘gay’ or whatever as that is, I have no fuckign clue what’s going on inside of his head right now. I can sort of tell with Mikasa, because I was pretty close to er with how long we dated, and I really just get the feeling that something just isn’t right. If he would have just  _ told  _ me what the hell is going on… ugh. He had plenty of chances to tell me.

“Come on,” Mikasa says in a tight sounding voice. “We’re going home, Eren.” I notice how she refuses to acknowledge any of the rest of our presences, and I feel like she’s really salty at us for not replying to her about Eren. Sorry, Mikasa. He clenches his jaw at that, and for a second I think that maybe he’s going to argue with her in front of us and say no. In that case I’m not sure what I would do. Stick up for a bro and let him sleep on my couch, or tell him that he needs to go with Mikasa and sort out whatever shit is between them now before it hurts either or them more. 

“Fine,” he spits out, sounding increasingly more pissed off as the seconds go bye. He turns to Connie, Sash, and I and says, “bye guys,” in one of the most bitter voices I’ve heard yet today. I wonder… if any of this has anything to do with Levi? Maybe Mikasa found out and had a … not very good reaction to it. I think I would be upset if one of my best friends, or my theoretical brother, was dating someone that they had been thirsting over for a long time and never bothered to tell me. No, they didn’t tell me purposefully. Yeah. That would sting.

“Bye Eren,” I say, and I hear Connie and Sasha echoing me. We were all laughing on the trail just a few minutes earlier, before I connected the dots to check my phone. Before we saw Mikasa stalking down towards us. Before she refused to acknowledge us, and Eren looked more bitter than I’ve seen him all day, and he walked off with Mikasa to the car that isn’t even either of theirs. I wonder how much Mrs. Jaeger is worrying about her son right now. I mean, she’s a really caring person, she must be nerve wrecked. 

I turn to look at Sash and Connie after Eren gets into the passenger side of the car and Mikasa drives away, and they look … not really sad, but definitely not happy. Sasha crinkles up her nose when she looks at me, like she’s really uncomfortable with this situation. “I think we should be going too,” she tells both Connie and I, and I nod. We start walking towards my car, talking about what just happened.?” Connie asks to anyone, and I just shrug in a response. Sasha says some theory that may or may not be true about what she thinks, and as I get in the car I can’t help but think that this is wrong. Why isn’t Armin interceding in this? Usually that blonde coconut stops either of them from getting too crazy when their personalities clash, which is kinda rare but it happens more often than you would think. I have no idea how to be the mediator in this situation. Hell, I don’t even really know what’s going on. 

I drop off Sash first, not really joining into their conversation very much. I chime in every five minutes or so with some little tidbit, but then stop talking because I’m kind of too busy thinking about all of this. If this thing between them right now is… Levi, then how is that going to effect Eren’s relationship with him? Also, what is Levi going to do about it if he sees that he’s upsetting Mikasa that much? And why won’t ERen just fucking tell me what happened for real between the two of them? I just want to know the more recent backstory of them making out on my car, that’s all I want. Is that too much to ask for? I don’t think so. 

When Sasha is all dropped off and walked into her house (it takes a little while when we get there because Connie does this gross thing where he says goodbye with his mouth), I start driving to my house. Connie can just walk to his house from mine, to be honest, I’m not up for the amount of effort it would take to actually drop him off right now. Maybe some other time, Connie. 

“Hey man,” Connie says when he’s getting out of the passenger seat (he switched to the passenger seat after Sash was dropped off because he didn’t feel the need to be in the middle and make out with a now non existent girlfriend). He looks like he’s about to say something, and I don’t reply, I just wait for him to speak. Finally, his face contorts into something that looks a little bit like giving up, and a little bit like something else I can’t identify. “Bye,” he finishes, and then just straight up runs away to his house. 

I watch him go.

“Bye,” I say, when he’s already long gone. And then I walk inside. 

 

\-----

 

When I pull up to Eren and Mikasa’s house in the morning, Eren is waiting on his front porch with a stony sort of face and his breakfast, a chocolate fudge pop tart, in his hand. He munches on it with this bored sort of mannerism, and I can’t help but think he looks a little bit pathetic. Whatever happened with that argument with Mikasa, I’m going to assume that it didn’t go so well. Partially from how Eren looks, yes, but also from the fact that Mikasa is almost pointedly absent from this picture. 

Eren sees me and stands up, his face adopting a less bored / miserable expression at the sight of his ride. And maybe he seems less pathetic at the sight of his friend. I’m halfway convinced that at this point Eren looks at me and sees half horse, half car though. What an attractive mental image that is, dear god I need to stop. I need to leave, I need to … vacate the premises. 

“Yo,” he greets me, coming into the passenger seat of my car the same way he always does. I don’t reply, but I raise an eyebrow at him, waiting until he addresses the fact that Mikasa isn’t in the car to drive away. He seems to wait too, as if he really doesn’t want to address it and refuses to, btu then in a moment his fight is gone. “Mikasa… already left. She got a ride from Annie. Don’t worry about her.”

I think I should say something. Should I be sympathetic? Should I be mad at him? I don’t know what the hell is really happening anymore, and I just want to be in the know. But also, I’m taking up time and we need to get to school. That’s it, I’ll just grill Eren about it later today. Today though. It’s friday, and if Mikasa isn’t going to come back with us then I’m taking Eren to Amsterdam, just the two of us. We need to talk. He’s been silent about the things I care about for too long now, like a good two weeks.

I’m ready to know already, you know?

“Okay,” I finally say to him, not knowing how else to end the moment. He nods awkwardly, almost sheepishly I’d say, and I start driving to school. “So,” I try to say to him on the way to school, “willing to divulge what the hell that was yesterday? And today, while you’re at it?” He sighs, instead of really answering me. God, this really isn’t good, is it? 

“Maybe…” I think he’s not going to finish his sentence, but then he turns back to me from where he was gazing like an emo out the window, “maybe we should go to Amsterdam after school today. Then I’ll talk to you about it. All of it, because I know your nosy arse has been itching to know all about the Levi thing too.” I shrug. Guilty as charged. “Deal?” he asks.

“Deal,” I say in return, hoping that if we go to Amsterdam again (when, not if, my thoughts are so odd) Mikasa doesn’t get mad at me again. I’m not going to tell Eren he can’t smoke like she probably wants me to, even after getting those texts about being disappointed in me (though that stung like a bitch) because like I’ve stated before, Eren is a big boy who can make his own choices. I may be rude to him sometimes, but I’m not disrespectful enough to outright make his decisions for him like he’s a child. Please. I do know that I’m going to be checking every single fucking notification I might get while we’re there though, because we are not having a repeat of yesterday. No. Never again. 

“Great,” he says, and he looks actually better than earlier today when I picked him up. As we get to school he turns to me with a look on his face like I should check to see if my wallet is still on me. “Guess who’s going to be paying our high school a cheeky visiting today, horseface,” he says to me. I kind of hate him for calling me horse face, yet again. Honestly, it’s not even that funny. It never was. I give him a bitch face and frown at him, because I refuse to reply to someone calling me horse face. That is not my name and I will not respond to it as if it is. It never has been and it never will be and people should stop calling me that. Really. It’s not entertaining to me in the slightest. Stop it. Cut it out.

He frowns too, when he realises that I’m refusing to play along and ask him until he calls me by the right name. Usually he’d just say ‘your loss’ and walk out of the car to go to where we meet in the morning, but he’s really excited about this I think, so he rephrases his command. “Guess who’s coming to pay us a cheeky visit,  _ Jean, _ ” and even though he says Jean in a mocking way I still won that. Ha.

I consider for a moment. I don’t know, and to be completely honest I probably don’t even are all that much, as much as Eren seems to think that I will. “Wow Eren, who could it ever be?” I ask in an equally mocking voice. Once again, he must be really excited about this, because he’s ignoring me mocking him mocking me in order to look excited and open his mouth to answer my question. 

“Well, he comes to our math class every once in awhile, really hot, really smart…” Eren trails off and it hits me like a sack of rocks that it’s Levi. It should have been obvious from the beginning. Who else visits our school?

“So Levi is skipping class to hook up with you in the bathroom?” I ask him, and he rolls his eyes at me but doesn’t look very mad. Which is kinda weird. Eren’s only emotion is pretty much anger. At least mild anger. Just like Levi’s constant state of emotion seems to be mild irritation. Wait, they’re perfect for each other. Except for Levi being a math teacher’s son, this is actually a match made in heaven. Well, thinking back on that probably not with heaven’s view of gays and all that. The point I made still stands anyway though. 

“Well, he has an off day today. After we hang out at Amsterdam, I was actually hoping you’d drive me to the date I have with him at five. I mean, you don’t have to, but it wouldn’t make any sense to not. Wait, I changed my mind. You have to. You’re morally obligated, or something like that, because we’re friends.” I choose to take this moment to raise an eyebrow at Eren. 

“Are we though, Eren?” I ask him. He opens his mouth wide in shock, and I lt out a bark of laughter at his expression. He looks like I personally wronged him. Well. I guess you could say that I did. It was funny, so does it really count though? Not funny to Eren, but it’s not like that’s in the equation at all or whatever. What makes Jean laugh makes Jean laugh, and oftentimes that is Jean. I’m fucking hilarious, okay.

“Fuck you, horse man!” he exclaims at me, and I shrug at that. Oky, so maybe I deserved being called horse man this time. Just this once, though. That isn’t an excuse to call me a horse any other time. It’s just a little justified. 

“Okay, let’s go inside,” I say, and we walk off to the building. Right when I walk inside next to Eren, though, the bell rings.  _ Shit.  _ I’m not even close to my first class. I turn to say a quick goodbye to Eren, but he’s already blasted off, probably trying to get to a class that he’s going to be late to. I don’t get offended, I get it, and I start running off to make it to english class on time. Connie had better have run off, because if he waited for me I’d feel really guilty about it. 

I make it to English class by the skin of my teeth or whatever that saying is, and literally a second after I walk through the door of the classroom the bell signaling the start of the day is ringing. Connie grins up at me from where he’s sitting at his desk. I roll my eyes at the fruit snacks h’s eating, and hold out a hand for him to share some with me. 

“Just barely made it, huh brother?” He says, and I nod while eating some of his fruit snacks. What a saint, am I right? I’m not sure i would share my fruit snacks if I had them and brought them. Actually that’s a lie. I know I wouldn’t share them, not just think so. I know so. I’m a pretty bomb ass friend to have, but I don’t reach those levels. Not that Connie’s like perfect friend, though he’s pretty great. What am I saying. He’s amazing, what even is my head? I don’t know. I’m stopping this train of thought. 

“Today I’m going to meet with all of you about how your projects are coming along,” my english teacher says at the front of the classroom. “I just don’t want the day of presenting to some and only half of you to half something prepared, a quarter of you with something quality.” I look around. We have about twenty four people in this english class, including Hitch who’s skipping today. That means she only expects six out of the twenty four of us to have quality projects. Wow. Thanks for the confidence boost. That really helped me out there. Sometimes adults open their mouths and say shit that’s nice, and I have to wonder if they forget that they have to watch what they say.

Once my mom and I were fighting, right. I was crying, which I usually don’t do, btu things we really rough. I was also kicked out that night, thinking back on it. Anyways, she outright told me not only that I make her question her faith in god (which is bullshit in my opinion but everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and I was hurt by the general fact that sh’d blame me for damaging something so fundamentally important for her), but that the reason I dressed to unattractive was because I wanted to hide. “When I was in high school I wore dresses and makeup because I wanted to be pretty. Not that I want you to do that, ut I think you wear… what you wear because you just want to stay out of sight and hide from people.” 

Like, that’s not okay to say to someone? Not that I really gave a shit, because I wear what I want when I want because I want to and if you don’t like that I don’t give a shit, but that doesn’t take away from that even though she’s an adult and my mom, that wasn’t okay for her to say to me. Adults, simply because they are adults, are not exempt from the basic laws of being respectful, and I don’t get why a lot of them seem to forget that. Sure, I’m not exactly a shining example of one human seeing another human and being kind to them, but I don’t just say things like that to my friends or to my parents. Now, I would get kicked out of the house probably if I said that to my parents, but still. Basic human decency. Where’d it go, @a lot of the adults in the world?

I raise an eyebrow at Connie, but don’t verbally acknowledge my english teacher being a bitch to us. I mean,i it’s been happening since the very beginning of the year. Right off the bat she was a bitch to us, so it’s not like I expected anything different. Not really. The basics of what she said wasn’t all that bad, btu the way that she said it so snidely and down her nose at us was pretty fucking annoying. Maybe I’m just really mad today. That could very easily be possible. I get like that sometimes. Okay, a lot. 

The class passes by rather quickly, although it’s a regular day. I spend some time thinking up ways that I could improve my song, and I wonder if maybe I could not sing it in front of the class and instead share a link to the original video? But then that would expose my channel to all of my english class. Maybe they wouldn’t notice my other uploads. Or maybe I could do a re - amped version of the song, upload it to YouTube as a reupload, and show that to the class. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about warming up that day or bringing my preciou guitar to this hell of a school where some idiot would probably destroy it. 

My english teacher was pretty surprised at how far along I already am with the project. She only stood by me for a few seconds, when I asked her if in future class periods I could use the music tech rooms to record my song in better quality she was actually… nice about it. She seemed excited that at least one of her seniors wasn’t suffering from senioritis about the project and was pretty far along already. 

On that whole senioritis thing, she’s totally wrong though. And it isn’t even a new thing for me or anything like that. I’ve basically had senioritis since the very first day of kindergarten, and that has been a point of conflict between me and my parents over the years. I just really only care if I pass, and if I don’t need to pass a class to make it out of school at the same time as everyone else I might not try at all with it. Not the best for wanting to be a teacher, but if I became a musician…

No. Stomp down that thought. So… you’ve created a YouTube channel. So what? That doesn’t mean you’re going to be crazy successful. That doesn’t mean you’re about to launch your shining star career in music. You’ll be disappointed if you let yourself get your hopes up, so just squash them down now. Down. Down down down with you. The hopes need to go, they’ll only hurt you in the long run. That’s something that, if I’ve learned one thing from life, is a truth. You can’t just let your hopes rise, because then you’ll end up so, so broken. 

Orchestra is fun after that, because it’s friday and Nanaba doesn’t feel like really doing stuff so we play through all of our songs twice (we aren’t really  _ good  _ at them yet, saying as we got the music only about two weeks ago or something) and then Nanaba says we can just fool around on our phones for the rest of the day. “There’s too much stress in the average high schooler’s life in this day and age,” Nanaba told our Orchestra class, “and that’s bullshit. So take this time to nap or be a kid or do homework or something. It’s been a really nice low energy day for me, and you guys deserve to have at least an hour of a low energy day too.” I swear, Nanaba is honestly a motherfucking  _ god.  _

At one point we have a small battle of the bassists in class, which I come in first in. It’s because of all that jazz training I’ve had and the jazz practice which wows everyone. I have to pay for the gas for my car somehow, and I get good money from rich people or just married people or whatever wanting jazz played at their event. If I just speed it up a little bit, everyone is impressed. What an I say, I’m pretty good at jazz. It also is a way that I can make up to my mom sometimes, because if we have a fight or I have a fight with my dad (to her that’s the same thing as having a fight with her) and then she hears me practicing jazz really loudly she gets happier. Not that being a musician is any more of a career option, but at least now her good for nothing son Jean is good at  _ something.  _

Eren texts me near the end of the hour. 

 

 **Eren :** guess who’s going to be here in third hour

 

 **Jean :** you’re a weirdo

 

 **Eren :** your just jealous i get more action that u

 

 **Jean :** *you’re

 

 **Eren :** stfu

 **Eren :** still. excite. i mean its not like i get to see him all the time and who knows what well do when hes here

 

 **Jean :** eren. you’re at school. wtf would you be doing here

 

**Eren : ;)**

 

Sometimes I wonder if Eren needs help. How does he expect to do anything that he’s suggesting at here? We have security cameras. Not inside the bathroom, but outside. A teacher could probably tell that they’re skipping by watching the tapes. What an idiot. I don’t think Levi even cares though. That or he likes the fact that he gets action. Or maybe he knows at this point (like many of Eren’s friend group has come to realise over the years) that trying to make Eren into someone who is not actually an idiot is a fool’s errand and borderline impossible if not outright. He would like to say he’s untameable. I would prefer to say he’s incurably idiotic. It’s more or less the same thing. 

Orchestra ends with the bell sounding and Nanaba yelling practically from their office to have a good weekend and not do anything we might regret in about nine months. A  _ god,  _ I say, a  _ god.  _ Nanaba might just be my favorite teacher. One time I low key got in a fight at school because some bitch was testing me and so I yelled at them and called them a dumb cunt really loudly in front of the teacher, and Nanaba let me stay in their office / classroom the whole school day. They were really nice about all of it too. 

When I walk into math Eren is sitting in his desk with his feet propped up on the top of my desk. By this point I think Mr. Smith has just given up on Eren or maybe he just doesn’t give a shit anymore. I don’t blame him. Eren is… special to say the least. It takes a lot to put up with him sometimes. 

“Get your feet off my desk, you bugger,” I say to him. He frowns, not looking really upset at all, which is mildly infuriating. Yeah, really don’t blame Mr. Smith. Then he sighs dramatically, and slides his feet off making the squeaking noises that shoes do. Of course, he wearing the same black converse he always does, it’s his aesthetic. Hsi mildly emo, almost too gay to be true, aesthetic. That’s in his own words too. 

“Ugh, you take the fun out of  _ everything,  _ Jeanbo,” he says to me, but he must be really excited about Levi coming because he doesn’t even sound a little bit aggravated at me. I mean, usually it’s pretty hard for Eren and I to interact without one of us wanting to strangle the other at some point. But even the thought of Levi coming to our school today makes Eren like a hyper puppy. It’s kind of … unnerving. 

When the bell rings Connie is talking to Eren about something that probably doesn’t matter all that much and I’m not really paying attention, just doodling triangles on the corner of the math homework I didn’t do last night. I did like… three fourths of it in that free time in Orchestra after the battle of the bassists, which is more than I usually do. I’m still pretty proud that I won that, the battle of the bassists that is. 

I have riptide stuck in my head. I can’t help but think of strong arms and a ukulele and a nice voice is singing the head, one that’s different from vance joy. 

What a good cover. 

 

_ I was scared of dentists and the dark _

 

“So, class, it’s go over our homework,” Mr. Smith says in his loud voice. I’m not paying attention. I’m kinda … spacey today. 

 

_ I was scared of pretty girls and starting conversations,  _

_ well all my friends are turning green _

 

Eren gets a text. I can tell because I hear the vibrate next to me. He checks it, looks up at me, and grins at me. I can tell who it’s from already, if it wasn’t obvious. 

 

_ You're the magician's assistant in their dreams,  _

_ oh oh oh, oh oh oh,  _

_ and they come unstuck _

 

“Mr. Smith?” Eren raises his hand. “Can I go to the bathroom?” Mr. Smith seems skeptical, but he glances to Eren’s paper, he nods, and Eren goes.

 

_ Lady, running down to the riptide,  _

_ taken away to the dark side,  _

_ I wanna be your left hand man _

 

Connie waggles his eyebrows at me. I think he knows as well as I do who’s meeting Eren in the school bathroom. Honestly, it’s kind of cringey, but I’m happy he’s gotten with Levi if he makes Eren that happy.

 

_ I love you when you’re singing that song and _

_ I got a lump in my throat cos _

_ You’re gonna sing the words wrong _

 

When Eren walks in almost half an hour later with Levi, Mr. Smith doesn’t care. Maybe there’s more to this than I thought.

 

**Eren :** guess who just got lucky in the bathroom

 

**Jean :** fucking hell Eren what even

 

**Eren :** ;)

 

Oh my god Eren. Sometimes I can’t believe him. Still, happy for him and all that. I mean, not that I think getting lucky in the bathroom is the best place or way to get it done, but I guess whatever works for him works for him. 

God, I’m really spacey today. I can’t concentrate on math at all. The numbers might as well be freckles on the arms of a hot guy, the decimal points might as well be music notes to the song still stuck in my head. Still in the voice of a man I don’t even know.

I just hope no one really notices it.

 

_ You’re gonna sing the words wrong _


End file.
